
Class l.„, 1^ { U eo 

Book j_ 

Copyright }J°. 



COEQRIGKT DEPOSIIi 



THE HIGH SCHOOL FAILURES 



A STUDY OF THE SCHOOL RECORDS OF PUPILS 
FAILING IN ACADEMIC OR COMMERCIAL 
. HIGH SCHOOL SUBJECTS 



By 
FRANCIS P. OBRIEN. PH.D. 



TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION. NO. 102 



PUBUSHED BY 

Etutiftre Olnllpgr, Qlnlumhia llttttirrattj} 

NEW YORK CITY 
1919 



9-2 



Copyright, 1919, by Francis P. OBrien 



SEP 4 jSjg 



©CIA535042 



PREFACE 

Grateful acknowledgment is due the principals of each of the 
high schools whose records are included in this study, for the 
courteous and helpful attitude which they and their assistants 
manifested in the work of securing the data. Thanks are due 
Dr. John S. Tildsley for his generous permission to consult the 
records in each or any of the New York City high schools. But 
the fullest appreciation is felt and acknowledged for the ready 
criticism and encouragement received from Professor Thomas H. 
Briggs and Professor George D. Strayer at each stage from the 
inception to the completion of this study. 

F. P. O. 



Ill 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. — The General Introduction of the Subject 

1. The Relevance of This Study 1 

2. The Meaning of Failure in This Study 3 

3. Scope and Content of the Field Covered 4 

4. Sources of the Data Employed 6 
5. -Selection and Reliability of These Sources 8 
6. Summary of Chapter, and References 11 

II. — How Extensive are the Failures of the High School 

Pupils? 

1. A Distribution of All Entrants in Reference to Failure 12 

2. The Later Distribution of the Pupils by Semesters 14 

3. The Distribution of the Failures — by Ages and by 

Semesters 14 

4. Distribution of the Failures by Subjects 19 

5. The Pupils Dropping Out — Time and Age 24 

6. Summary of Chapter, and References 27 

HI. — What Basis is Discoverable for a Prognosis of 
the Occurrence or the Number of Failures? 

1. Some Possible Factors — Attendance, Mental and Physical 

Defects, Size of Classes 29 

2. Employment of the School Entering Age for the Purpose 

of Prognosis 31 

3. The Percentage of Failure at Each Age on the Possibility 

of Failures for That Age 36 

4. The Initial Record in High School 37 

5. Prognosis of Failure by Subject Selection 39 

6. The Time Period and the Number of Failures 40 

7. Similarity of Facts for Boys and Girls 45 

8. Summary of Chapter, and References 45 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

IV. — How Much is Graduation or the Persistence 

IN School Conditioned by the Occurrence 

OR BY THE Number of Failures? 

1. Comparison of the Failing and the Non-faihng Groups 

in Reference to Graduation and Persistence 48 

2. The Number of Failures and the Years Required to 

Graduate 49 

3. The Number of Failures and the Semesters of Dropping 

Out, for Non-graduates 51 

4. The Percentages That the Non-graduate Groups Form of 

the Pupils Who Have Each Successively Higher Nimi- 

ber of Failures 55 

5. Time Extension for the Failing Graduates 56 , 

6. Summary of Chapter, and References 57 

V. — Are THE School Agencies Employed in Remedying 
the Failures Adequate for the Purpose? 

1. Repetition as a Remedy for Failures 60 

a. Size of Schedule and Results of Repeating. 

b. Later Grades in the Same Kind of Subjects, Following 

Repetition and Without it. 

c. The Grades in Repeated Subjects and in New Work. 

d. The Number and Results of Identical Repetitions. 

2. Discontinuance of the Subject or Course, and the Substi- 

tution of Others 68 

3. The Employment of School Examinations 69 

4. The Service Rendered by the Regents' Examinations in 

New York 70 

5. Continuation of Subjects Without Repetition or Ex- 

amination 73 

6. Simimary of Chapter, and References 74 

VI. — Do the Failures Represent a Lack of Capability 

OR OF Fitness for High School Work on 

THE Part of Those Pupils ? 

1. Some Are Evidently Misfits 76 

2. Most of the Failing Pupils Lack Neither Ability nor 

Earnestness 77 



Contents vii 

PAGE 

3. The School Emphasis and the School Failures Are Both 

Culminative in Particular School Subjects 81 

4. An Indictment Against the Subject-Matter and the 

Teaching Ends as Factors in Producing Failures 83 

5. Summary of Chapter, and References 85 

VII. — What Treatment is Suggested by the Diagnosis 
OF the Facts of Failure? 

1. Organization and Adaptation in Recognition of the In- 

dividual Differences in Abilities and Interests 87 

2. Faculty Student Advisers from the Time of Entrance 89 

3. Greater Flexibility and Differentiation Required 90 

4. Provision for the Direction of the Pupils' Study 92 

5. A Greater Recognition and Exposition of the Facts as 

Revealed by Accurate and Complete School Records 94 

6. Summary of Chapter, and References 96 



A STUDY- OF THE SCHOOL RECORDS OF THE 
PUPILS FAILING IN ACADEMIC OR COM- 
MERCIAL HIGH SCHOOL SUBJECTS 

CHAPTER I 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF THE SUBJECT 

L The Relevance of This Study 

As the measuring of the achievements of the public schools 
has become a distinctive feature of the more recent activities in 
the educational field, the failure in expected accomplishment by 
the school, and its proficiency in turning out a negative product, 
have been forced upon our attention rather emphatically. The 
striking growth in the number of school surveys, measuring 
scales, questionnaires, and standardized tests, together with many 
significant school experiments and readjustments, bears testimony 
of our evident demand for a closer diagnosis of the practices and 
conditions which are no longer accepted with complacency. 

The American people have expressed their faith in a scheme 
of universal democratic -education, and have committed them- 
selves to the support of the free public high school. They have 
been liberal in their financing and strong in their faith regarding 
this enterprise, so typically American, to a degree that a sec- 
ondary education may no longer be regarded as a luxury or a 
heritage of the rich. No longer may the field be treated as 
either optional or exclusive. The statutes of several of our states 
now expressly or impliedly extend their compulsory attendance 
requirements beyond the elementary years of school. Many, too, 
are the lines of more desirable employment for young people 
which demand or give preference to graduates of a high school. 
At the same time there has been no decline in the importance of 
high school graduation for entering the learned or professional 
pursuits. Accordingly, it seems highly probable that, with such 

1 



2 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

an extended and authoritative sphere of influence, a stricter 
business accounting will be exacted of the public high school, as 
the great after-war burdens make the public less willing to de- 
pend on faith in financing so great an experiment. They will 
ask, ever more insistently, for facts as to the expenditures, the 
finished product, the internal adjustments, and the waste product 
of our secondary schools. Such inquiries will indeed seem 
justifiable. 

It is estimated that the public high schools had 84 per cent of 
all the pupils (above 1,500,000) enrolled in the secondary schools 
of the United States in 1916.^ The majority of these pupils are 
lost from school — whatever the cause' — before the completion of 
their courses ; and, again, the majority of those who do graduate 
have on graduation ended their school days. Consequently, it 
becomes more and more evident how momentous is the influence 
of the public high school in conditioning the life activities and 
opportunities of our youthful citizens who have entered its 
doors. Before being entitled to be considered a " big business 
enterprise,"^ it seems imperative that our " American High 
School " must rapidly come to utilize more of business methods 
of accounting and of efiiciency, so as to recognize the tremendous 
waste product of our educational machinery. 

The aim of this study is to trace as carefully and completely 
as may be the facts relative to that major portion of our high 
school population, the pupils who fail in their school subjects, 
and to note something of the significance of these findings. If 
we are to proceed wisely in reference to the failing pupils in the 
high school, it is admittedly of importance that such procedure 
should be based on a definite knowledge of the facts. The value 
of such a study will in turn be conditioned by the scrupulous 
care and scientific accuracy in the securing and handling of the 
facts. It is believed that the causes of and the remedies for 
failure are necessarily closely linked with factors found in the 
school and with the school experiences of failing pupils, so that 
the problem cannot be solved by merely labeling such pupils as 
the unfit. There is no attempt in this study to treat all failures 
as in any single category. The causes of the failures are not 
assumed at the start nor given the place of chief emphasis, but 
are regarded as incidental to and dependent upon what the evi- 



General Introduction of the Subject 3, 

dence itself discloses. The success of the failing pupils after 
they leave the high school is not included in this undertaking, 
but is itself a field worthy of extended study. Even our knowl- 
edge of what later happens to the more successful and the gradu- 
ating high -school pupils is limited mainly to those who go on to 
college or to other higher institutions. One of the more familiar 
attempts to evaluate the later influence of the high school illus- 
trates the fallacy of overlooking the process of selection involved, 
and of treating its influence in conjunction with the training as 
though it were the result of school training alone.^ 

2. The Meaning of ' Failure ' in This Study 

The term ' failure ' is employed in this study to signify the 
non-passing of a pupil in any semester-subject of his school 
work. The school decision is not questioned in the matter of a 
recorded failure. And although it is usually understood to ne- 
gate "abiHty plus accomplishment," it may, and undoubtedly 
does, at times imply other meanings, such as a punitive mark, a 
teacher's prejudice, or a deferred judgment. The mark may at 
times tell more about the teacher who gave it than about the pupil 
who received it. These peculiarities of the individual teacher 
or pupil are pretty well compensated for by the large number of 
teachers and of pupils involved. The decisive factor in this 
matter is that the school refuses to grant credit for the work 
pursued. The failure for a semester seems to be a more adapt- 
able unit in this connection than the subject-failure for a year. 
However, it necessitates the treatment of the subject-failure for 
a year as equivalent to a failure for each of the two semesters. 
Two of the schools involved in this study (comprising about 11 
per cent of the pupils) recorded grades only at the end of the 
year. It is quite probable that the marking by semesters would 
actually have increased the number of failures in these schools, 
as there are many teachers who confess that they are less willing 
to make a pupil repeat a year than a semester. 

By employing this unit of failure, the failures in the different 
subjects are regarded as comparable. Since only the academic 
and commercial subjects are considered, and since they are al- 
most uniformly scheduled for four or five hours a week, the 



4 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

failures will seem to be of something near equal gravity and to 
represent a similar amount of non-performance or of unsatis- 
factory results. There were also a few failures included here 
for those subjects which had only three hours a week credit, 
mainly in the commercial subjects. But failures were unnoted 
when the subject was listed for less than three hours a week. 

There are certain other elements of assumption in the treat- 
ment of the failures, which seemed to be unavoidable. They are, 
first, that failure in any subject is the same fact for boys and for 
girls ; second, that failures in different years of work or with 
different teachers are equivalent; third, that failures in elective 
and in required subjects are of the same gravity. It was found 
practically impossible to differentiate required and elective sub- 
jects, however desirable it would have been, for the subjects that 
are theoretically elective often are in fact virtually required, the 
electives of one course are required in another, and on many of 
the records consulted neither the courses nor the electives are 
clearly designated. 

3. The Scope and Content of the Field Covered 

\ As any intensive study must almost necessarily be limited in 
its scope, so this one comprises for its purposes the high school 
records for 6,141 pupils belonging to eight different high schools 
located in New York and New Jersey. For two of these schools 
the records for all the pupils that entered are included here for 
five successive years, and for their full period in high school. 
In two other schools the records of all pupils that entered for 
four successive years were secured. In four of the schools the 
records of all pupils who entered in February and September of 
one year constituted the number studied. There is apparently 
no reason to believe that a longer period of years would be more 
representative of the facts for at least three of these four schools, 
in view of the situation that they had for years enjoyed a con- 
tinuity of administration and that they possess a well-established 
organization. The fourth one of these schools had less com- 
plete records than were desired, but even in that the one year 
was representative of the other years' records. The distribution 
of the 6,141 pupils by schools and by years of entering high 
school is given below. 



ENTERING High Sci 


aooL 


Number 


IN THE Years 




Studied 


1908, '09, '10, '11, 


'12 


659 


1909, '10, '11, '12 




370 


1912 




224 


1908, '09, '10, '11, 


'12 


946 


1909, '10, '11, '12 




736 


1912 




333 


1912 
1912 




1712 
1161 



General Introduction of the Subject 

High School Pupils 
in: 

White Plains, N. Y. 
Dunkirk, N. Y. 
Mount Vernon, N. Y. 
Montclair, N. J. 
Hackensack, N. J, 
Elizabeth, N. J. 
Morris H. S. — Bronx 
Erasmus Hall H. S. — Brooklyn 

Total 6141 

As it is essential for the purposes of this study to have the 
complete record of the pupils for their full time in the high 
school, the 6,141 pupils include none who entered later than 1912. 
■ Thus all were allowed at least five and one-half or six years in 
which to terminate their individual high school history, of suc- 
cesses or of failures, before the time of making this inquiry into 
their records. No pupils who were transferred from another 
high school or who did not start with the class as beginning high 
school students were included among those studied. Post-grad- 
uate records were not considered, neither was any attempt made 
to trace the record of drop-outs who entered other schools. 
Manifestly the percentage of graduation would be higher in any 
school if the recruits from other schools and the drop-backs from 
other classes in the school were included. 

No attempt has been made to trace the elementary school or 
college records of the failing pupils, for our purpose does not 
reach beyond the sphere of the high school records. In refer- 
ence to the differentiation by school courses, some facts were at 
first collected, but these were later discarded, as the courses 
represent no standardization in terminology or content, and they 
promised to give nothing of definite value. As might be expected, 
the schools lacked agreement or uniformity in the number of 
courses offered. One school had no commercial classes, as that 
work was assigned to a separate school; another school offered 
only typewriting and stenography of the commercial subjects; a 
third had placed rather slight emphasis on the commercial sub- 
jects until recently. Only four of the schools had pupils in 
Greek. The Spanish classes outnumbered the Greek both by 
schools and by enrollment. In the classification by subjects, 
English is made to include (in addition to the usual subjects of 



6 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

that name) grammar, literature, and business English. Mathe- 
matics includes all subjects of that class except commercial arith- 
metic, which is treated as a commercial subject, and shop-mathe- 
matics, which is classed as non-academic. Industrial history, 
and * political and social science ' are regarded along with aca- 
demic subjects ; likewise household chemistry is included with 
the science classification. Economics is treated as a commercial 
subject. At least a dozen other subjects, not classified as aca- 
demic or commercial, including also spelling and penmanship, 
were taken by a portion of these pupils, but the records for these 
subjects do not enter this study in determining the successful 
and failing grades or the sizes of schedule. Yet it is true that 
such subjects do demand time and work from those pupils. 

4. Sources of the Data Employed 

. The only records employed in this whole problem of research 
were the official school records. No questionnaires were used, 
and no statements of pupils or opinions of teachers as such were 
sought. The facts are the most authoritative and dependable 
available, and are the very same upon which the administrative 
procedure of the school relative to the pupil is mainly dependent. 
The individual, cumulative records for the pupils provided the 
chief source of the facts secured. These school records, as 
might be expected, varied considerably as to the form, the size, 
the simplicity in stating facts, and the method of filing; but they 
were quite similar in the facts recorded, as well as in the com- 
pleteness and care with which the records were compiled. It 
may be added that only schools having such records were included 
in the investigation. 

After the meanings of symbols and devices and the methods 
of recording the facts had been fully explained and carefully 
studied for the records of any school, the selection of the pupil 
records was then made, on the basis of the year of the pupils' 
entrance to the school, including all the pupils who had actually 
entered and undertaken work. (Pupils who registered but failed 
to take up school work were entirely disregarded.) These indi- 
vidual records were classified into the failing and the non-failing 
divisions, then into graduating and non-graduating groups, with 



General Introduction of the Subject 7 

the boys and girls differentiated throughout. As fast as the 
records were read and interpreted into the terms required they 
were transcribed, with the pupils' names, by the author himself, 
to large sheets (16x20) from which the tabulations were later 
made. There was always an opportunity to ask questions and 
to make appeals for information either to the principal himself 
or to the secretary in charge of the records. This tended to 
reduce greatly the danger of mistakes other than those of chance 
error. The task of transcribing the data was both tedious and 
prolonged. This process alone required as much as four weeks 
for each of the larger schools, and without the continued and 
courteous cooperation of the principals and their assistants it 
would have been altogether impossible in that time. 

Some arbitrary decisions and classifications proved necessary 
in reference to certain facts involved in the data employed in 
this study. All statements of age will be understood as applying 
to within the nearest half year ; that is, fifteen years of age will 
mean within the period from fourteen years and a half to fifteen 
years and a half. The classification in the following pages by 
school years or semesters (half-years) is dependent upon the 
time of entrance into school. In this sense, a pupil who entered 
either in September or in February is regarded as a first semester 
pupil, however the school classes are named. As promotions are 
on a subject basis in each of the schools there is no attempt to 
classify later by promotions, but the time-in-school basis is re- 
tained. In reference to school marks or grades, letters are here 
employed, although four of the eight schools employ percentage 
grading. Whether the passing mark is 60, as in some of the 
schools, or 70, as in others, the letter C is used to represent one- 
third of the distance from the failing mark to 100 per cent; B 
is used to represent the next third of the distance ; and A is used 
to express the upper third of the distance. The plus and minus 
signs, attached to the gradings in three of the schools, are dis- 
regarded for the purposes of this study, except that when D-|- 
occurred as a conditional passing mark it was treated as a C. 
Otherwise D has been used to signify a failing grade in a subject, 
which means that the grade is somewhere below the passing 
mark. The term ' graduates ' is meant to include all who grad- 
uate, either by diploma or by certificate. Any statement mad^ 



8 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

in the following pages of ' time in school ' or of time spent for 
' securing graduation ' will not include as a part of such period 
a semester in which the pupil is absent all or nearly all of the 
time, as in the case of absence due to illness. 

5. The Selection and Reliability of These Sources of Data 

By employing data secured only from official school records 
and in the manner stated, this study has been limited to those 
schools that provide the cumulative pupil records, with continuity 
and completeness, for a sufficient period of years. Some schools 
had to be eliminated from consideration for our purposes because 
the cumulative records covered too brief a period of years. In 
other schools administrative changes had broken the continuity 
of the records, making them difficult to interpret or undepend- 
able for this study. The shortage of clerical help was the reason 
given in one school for completing only the records of the gradu- 
ates. In addition to the requirements pertaining to records, only 
publicly administered and co-educational schools have been in- 
cluded among those whose records are used. It was also con- 
sidered important to have schools representing the large as well 
as the small city on the list of those studied. Since many schools 
do not possess these important records, or do not recognize their 
value, it is quite probable that the conditions prescribed here 
tended to a selection of schools superior in reference to system- 
atic procedure, definite standards, and stable organization, as 
compared to those in general which lack adequate records. 

The reliability and correctness of these records for the schools 
named are vouched for and verbally certified by the principals 
as the most dependable and in large part the only information 
of its kind in the possession of the schools. In each of these 
schools the principals have capable assistants who are charged 
with the keeping of the records, although they are aided at times 
by teachers or pupils who work under direction. In three of the 
larger schools a special secretary has full" charge of the records, 
and is even expected to make suggestions for revisions and im- 
provements of the forms and methods. In view of such facts 
it seems doubtful that one could anywhere find more dependable 
school records of this sort. It was true of one of the schools 



General Introduction of the Subject 9 

that the records previous to 1909 proved to be unreliable. There 
is no inclination here to deny the existence of defects and limita- 
tions to these records, but the intimate acquaintance resulting 
from close inquiry, involving nearly every factor which the rec- 
,ords contain, is convincing that for these schools at least the 
records are highly dependable. 

However, there is some tendency for even the best school 
records to understate the full situation regarding failure, while 
there is no corresponding tendency to overstate or to record fail- 
ures not made. Not infrequently the pupils who drop out after 
previously failing may receive no mark or an incomplete one for 
the last semester in school. Although a portion or all of such 
work may obviously merit failure, yet it is not usually so re- 
corded. In a similar manner pupils who remain in school one 
or two semesters or less, but take no examinations and receive 
no semester grades, might reasonably be considered to have 
failed if they shunned examinations merely to escape the 
recording of failures, as sometimes appears to be the case 
when judged from the incomplete grades recorded for only 
a part of the semester. A few pupils will elect to * skip ' 
the regular term examination, and then repeat the work of 
that semester, but no failures are recorded in such instances. 
Some teachers, when recording for their own subjects, prefer 
to indicate a failure by a dash mark or by a blank space until 
after the subject is satisfied later, and the passing mark is then 
filled in. One school indicates failure entirely by a short dash 
in the space provided, and then at times there occurs the * cond ' 
(conditioned) in pencil, apparently to avoid the classification as 
a failure by the usual sign. One finds some instances of a * ? ' 
or an * inc ' (incomplete) as a substitute for a mark of failure. 
Again, where there is no indication of failure recorded, the dates 
accompanying the grades for the subjects may tell the tale that 
two semesters were required to complete one semester's work in 
a subject. Some of these situations were easily discernible, and 
the indisputable failures treated as such in the succeeding tabu- 
lations; but in many instances this was not possible, and partial 
statement of these cases is all that is attempted. 

How far these selected schools, their pupils, and the facts 
relating to them are representative or typical of the schools, the 



10 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

pupils, and the same facts for the states of New Jersey and New- 
York, cannot be definitely known from the information that is 
now available. It seems indisputable, however, that the schools 
concerned in this study are at least among the better schools of 
these two states. If we may feel assured that the 6,141 pupils 
here included are fairly and generally representative of the facts 
for the eight schools to which they belong and which had an 
enrollment of 14,620 pupils in 1916; and if we are justified in 
classing these schools as averaging above the median rank of the 
schools for these states, then the statistical facts presented in the 
following pages may seem to be a rather moderate statement 
regarding the failures of high school pupils for the states re- 
ferred to. It must be noted in this connection, however, that it 
is not unlikely that such schools, with their adequate records, 
will have the facts concerning failure more certainly recorded 
than will those whose records are incomplete, neglected, or poorly 
systematized. 

A partial comparison of the teachers is possible between the 
schools represented here and those of New York and New Jersey. 
More than four hundred teachers comprised the teaching staff 
for the 6,141 pupils of the eight schools reported here. Of these 
about 40 per cent were men, while the percentage of men of all 
high school teachers in New Jersey and New York* was about 
38 for the year 1916. The men in these schools comprised 50 
per cent of the teachers in the subjects which prove most difficult 
by producing the most failures, and they were more frequently 
found teaching in the advanced years of these subjects. It is 
not assumed here that men are superior as high school teachers, 
but the endeavor is rather to show that the teaching force was 
by its constitution not unrepresentative. It may be added here 
that few high schools anywhere have a more highly selected 
and better paid staff of teachers than are found in this group of 
schools. It is indeed not easy to believe that the situation in 
these eight selected schools regarding failure and its contributing 
factors could not be readily duplicated elsewhere within the same 
states. 



General Introduction of the Subject 11 

A Summary of Chapter I 

The American people have a large faith in the public high 
school. It enrolls approximately 84 per cent of the secondary- 
school pupils of the United States. High school attendance is 
becoming legally and vocationally compulsory. The size of the 
waste product demands a diagnosis of the facts. This study 
aims to discover the significant facts relative to the failing pupils.' 

Failure is used in the unit sense of non-passing in a semester 
subject. Failures are then counted in terms of these units. 

This study includes 6,141 pupils belonging to eight different 
high schools and distributed throughout two states. The cumu- 
lative, official, school records for these pupils formed the basis 
of the data used. 

The schools were selected primarily for their possession of 
adequate records. More dependable school records than those 
employed are not likely to be found, yet they tend to understate 
the facts of failure. It is quite possible that a superior school, 
and one with a high grade teaching staff, is actually selected by 
the requirements of the study. 

References: 

1. Annual Report of United States Commissioner of Education for 1917. 

2. Josslyn, H. W. Chapter IV, in Johnson's Modern High School. 

3. The Money Value of Education. Bulletin No. 22, 1917, United States 

Bureau of Education. 

4. New York and New Jersey State School Reports for 1917. 



CHAPTER II 

HOW EXTENSIVE ARE THE FAILURES OF THE HIGH 
SCHOOL PUPILS ? 

1. A Distribution of All Entrants in Reference to Failure 

With no purpose of making this a comparative study of 
schools, the separate units or schools indicated in Chapter I will 
from this point be combined into a composite and treated as a 
single group. It becomes possible, with the complete and tabu- 
lated facts pertaining to a group of pupils, after their high school 
period has ended, to get a comprehensive survey of their school 
records and to answer such questions as : ( 1 ) What part of the 
total number of boys or of girls have school failures? (2) To 
what extent are the non-failing pupils the ones who succeed in 
graduating? (3) To what extent do the failing pupils with- 
draw early? The following tabulation will show how two of 
these questions are answered for the 6,141 pupils here reported on. 



All Entrants 


Failing 


All Graduates 


Failing 


Totals.... 6,141 

Boys 2,646 

Girls 3,495 


3,573 (58.2%) 
1,645 (62.1%) 
1,928 (55.1%) 


1,936 

796 
1.140 


1,125 (58.1%) 
489 (61.4%) 
639 (55.8%) 



From this distribution we readily compute that the percentage 
of pupils who fail is 58.2 per cent (boys — 62.1, girls — 55.1). 
But this statement is itself inadequate. It does not take into 
account the 808 pupils who received no grades and had no chance 
to be classed as failing, but who were in most cases in school 
long enough to receive marks, and a portion of whom were either 
eliminated earlier or deterred from examinations by the expecta- 
tion of failing. It seems entirely safe to estimate that no less 
than 60 per cent of this non-credited number should^ be treated 
as of the failing groups of pupils. Then the percentage of pupils 
to be classed as failing in school subjects becomes 66 per cent 
(boys — 69.6, girls — 63.4). 

12 



How Extensive are the Failures? 13 

In considering the second inquiry above, we find from the 
preceding distribution of pupils that 58.1 per cent (boys — 61.4, 
girls — 55.8) of all pupils that graduate have failed in one or more 
subjects one or more times. This percentage varies from 34 per 
cent to 7Z per cent by schools, but in only two instances does the 
percentage fall below 50 per cent, and in one of these two it is 
almost 50 per cent. 

We may now ask, when do the failing and the non-failing non- 
graduates drop out of school? Of the total number of non- 
graduates (4,205), there are 2,448 who drop out after failing 
one or more times, and 1,757 who drop out without failing. The 
cumulative percentages of the non-graduates in reference to 
dropping out are here given. 

Cumulative Percentages of the Failing Non-Graduates 
AS They Are Lost by Semesters 

LOST BY 

END OF semester 123456789 
Percent 14.1 33.9 46.4 64.9 72.9 85.2 91.9 97.6 99.1 

Cumulative Percentages of Non-Failing Non-Graduates 

AS They Are Lost by Semesters 

lost by 

end of semester 123456789 

Percent 61.1 78.0 85.9 92.1 94.5 98.4 99.5 

Briefly stated, the above percentages assert that more than 
three fourths of those who neither fail nor graduate have left 
school by the end of the first year, while only 33.9 per cent of 
those non-graduates who fail have left so early. More than 50 
per cent of the failing non-graduates continue in school to near 
the end of the second year. By that time about 90 per cent of 
the non-failing non-graduates have been lost from school. By a 
combination of the above groups we get the percentages of all 
non-graduates lost by successive semesters. 

Cumulative Percentages of All Non-Graduates 

Lost by Successive Semesters 

lost by 

end of semester 12345678 

Percent 33.7 53.4 62.6 76.2 81.9 90.7 94.0 98.6 

These percentages of non-graduates indicate that more than 
50 per cent of those who do not graduate are gone by thei end 



14 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

of the first year, but that there are a few who continue beyond 
four years without graduating. 

2. The Later Distribution of Pupils by Semesters 

Consideration is here given to the number of the total entrants 
remaining in school for each successive semester, and then to 
the accompanying percentages of failure for each group. The 
following figures show the rapid decline in numbers. 

The Persistence of Pupils in School, by Semesters 
END OF semester 12 3 4 5 6 Graduate 

6,141 (Total) 4,723 3,893 3,508 2,935 2,697 2,234 1,936 

Percentages 76.9 63.4 57.1 47.8 43.9 36.4 31.5 

As was pointed out in Section 3 of Chapter I, the above 
group does not include any increment to its own numbers by 
means of transfer from other classes or schools. We find, ac- 
companying this reduction in the number of pupils, which shows 
more than 50 per cent gone by the end of the second year in 
school, that there is no corresponding reduction in the percentage 
of pupils failing each semester on the basis of the number of 
those in school for that semester. 

Percentage of Pupils Failing of the Pupils in School 
For That Period 

Semesters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 

Percent 34.2 37.3 38.5 40.2 38.2 37.1 30.0 24.0 

There is no difficulty in grasping the simple and definite sig- 
nificance of these figures, for they tell us that the percentage of 
pupils failing increases for the first four semesters, slightly de- 
clines for two semesters, with a greater decline for two more 
semesters. These percentages of failures are based on the num- 
ber of pupils enrolled at the beginning of the semester, and are 
accordingly lower than the facts would really warrant since that 
number is in each case considerably reduced by the end of the 
same semester. 

3. The Distribution of Failures 

That the failures are widely distributed by semesters, by ages, 
and for both boys and girls, is shown in Table I. 



How Extensive are the Failures? 



15 



The Distribution 



TABLE I 

OF Failures According to the Age and the Semester 
OF Their Occurrence* 



12 13 14 15 



AGES 

16 17 



18 19 20 21 



UNDIS- 

22 tributed totals 



1 B. 
G. 

2 B. 
G. 

3 B. 
G. 

4 B. 
G. 

5 B. 
G. 

6 B. 
G. 

7 B. 
G. 

8 B. 
G. 

9 B. 
G. 

10 B. 
G. 



20 321 

1 19 356 

.. 2 95 
.. 6 99 

. . 17 
.. 1 28 

.. .. 5 
.. .. 4 

.. .. 1 
.. .. 



650 575 167 34 16 
813 611 236 67 3 



423 534 256 

483 589 280 

267 443 363 

318 548 317 



57 27 4 
91 5 



96 22 
99 15 



101 437 403 169 32 

102 475 425 160 39 



5 
2 

7 2 

6 2 



Sum- B. 22 440 
mary G. 1 26 487 



19 195 377 214 61 13 3 

15 277 438 212 60 15 

4 70 322 326 99 33 3 

9 117 407 349 78 33 4 

17 155 227 106 16 4 

2 14 200 299 127 38 



42 173 109 49 2 

2 58 244 140 49 10 

31 32 18 1 

4 39 67 31 5 

1 16 9 3 

3 13 10 3 



1464 2271 2085 1328 520 156 18 
1742 2633 2365 1563 547 182 26 



10 
13 

5 

7 

2 
1 

5 
6 

6 
3 

6 
3 

4 
3 

5 
3 



43 
39 



1795 
2119 

3914 
1403 
1560 

2963 
1215 
1329 

2544 
1161 
1219 

2380 
889 
1020 

1909 
863 
1000 

1863 
531 
683 

1214 
380 
506 

886 
82 
146 

228 
29 
30 

59 
8348 
9612 
17,960 



* The expression of the above facts in terms of percentages for each age group was found 
to be difficult, since failures and not pupils are designated. But the total failures for each 
age group are expressed (on p. 36) as percentages of the entire number of subjects taken 
by these pupils for the semesters in which they failed. Such percentages increase as the 
ages rise. A similar statement of the percentages of failure by semesters will be found 
on p. 41. 

Table I reads: the boys had 20 failures and the girls had 19 
failures in the first semester and at the age of thirteen; in the 
second semester, at the age of thirteen, the boys had 2 failures 
and the girls 6. For each semester, the first line represents 
boys, the second line girls. There is a total of 17,960 failures 
listed in this table. In addition to this number there are 1,947 
uncompleted grades for the failing non-graduates. The semens- 



16 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 



TABLE II 

The Distribution of Failures According to the Ages and the Semes- 
S TERS OF Their Occurrence for the Graduating Pupils 



510 



s 

m 

1 
U 




13 14 


15 


16 


AGES 
17 


18 


19 


20 21 22 TOT 


1 


B. 
G. 


66 
4 68 


84 
123 


60 
68 


5 
23 


2 

4 


3 





... 220 

... 290 


2 


B. 
G. 


30 

1 25 


95 
119 


96 
121 


41 
30 


3 
11 


2 
2 




... 267 
... 309 


3 


B. 
G. 


6 

1 15 


108 
101 


98 
158 


71 
78 


22 

20 


1 
5 


3 



. . . 309 
... 378 


4 


B. 
G. 


4 
1 


54 

45 


157 
186 


107 
143 


36 
51 


6 

7 



2 


... 364 

... 435 


5 


B. 
G. 


1 



10 
9 


82 
145 


142 
187 


82 

88 


17 
22 


4 
9 


3 . . 341 
. . 460 


6 


B. 
G. 




4 
2 


34 
70 


158 
235 


139 

178 


32 
40 


9 
13 


2 . . 378 
1 . . 539 


7 


B. 
G. 


1 




2 


10 

7 


115 
130 


140 
187 


65 
69 


4 
19 


4 1 340 
414 


8 


B. 
G. 







2 


31 

45 


122 
150 


65 
95 


25 

37 


2 . . 245 
2 . . 331 


9 


B. 
G. 










4 


24 
32 


23 

40 


13 

24 


1 .. 61 
. . 100 


10 


B. 
G. 










1 
3 


11 
12 


5 
6 


3 .. 20 
1 .. 22 


Sum- B. 
mary G. 


. 108 
6 109 


355 
401 


537 
757 


670 
875 


571 
724 


225 
292 


63 ] 
110 


L5 1 2545 
4 3278 



576 



687 



799 



801 



917 



754 



576 



161 



42 



5823 

In the facts which are involved and in the manner of reading them, this table is similar 
to Table I. The mode of the distribution of totals for the ages is at 17 in this table, 
Further reference will be made to both Tables I and II in later chapters of this study. 
(Seepages 36, 37, 41, 42). 

ters were frequently completed by such pupils but the records 
were left incomplete. Their previous records and their pros- 
pects of further partial or complete failure seem to justify an 
estimate of 55 per cent (1,070) of these uncompleted grades as 
either tentative or actual but unrecorded failures. Therefore we 
virtually have 1,070 other failures belonging to these pupils 
which are not included in Table I. Accordingly, since the 
number can only be estimated, the fact that they are not in- 



How Extensive are the Failures? 17 

corporated in that table suggests that the information which it 
discloses is something less than a full statement of the school 
failures for these pupils. In the distribution of the totals for 
ages, the mode appears plainly at 16, but with an evident 
skewness toward the upper ages. The failures for the years 16, 
17, and 18, when added together, form 68.1 per cent of the total 
failures. If those for 15 years are also included, the result is 
86 per cent of the total. Of the total failures, 65.7 per cent are 
found in the first two years (11,801 out of the total of 17,960). 
But the really striking fact is that 34.3 per cent of the failures 
occur after the end of the first two years, after 52.2 per cent of 
the pupils are gone, and with other hundreds leaving in each 
• succeeding semester before even the end of the eighth. In 
Table II we have similar facts for the pupils who graduate. 
A further analysis of the failures is here made in reference 
to the number of pupils and the number of failures each. 

TABLE III 

A Distribution of Failing Pupils According to the Number of Failures 
PER Pupil, in Each Semester 



Si 










semesters 












^t2 




1 


2 


3 


4 


5 


6 


7 


8 


9 


10 


totals 


1^ 


B. 


459 


430 


375 


352 


271 


221 


157 


113 


22 


11 


2411 




G. 


561 


535 


428 


421 


328 


261 


167 


123 


35 


__9 


2868 


















32.5% 






5279 


2 


B. 


271 


242 


211 


206 


149 


144 


79 


68 


19 


4 


1393 




G. 


271 


253 


238 


204 


177 


142 


127 


84 


17 


_6 


1519 








34.9% 






2912 


3 


B. 


144 


106 


81 


73 


59 


60 


45 


27 


6 


2 


603 




G. 


207 


103 


81 ■ 


75 


75 


83 


52 
35. 


38 

% 


20 


3 


737 
1340 


4 


B. 


83 


39 


33 


30 


27 


32 


10 


10 


•1 


1 


266 




G. 


95 


50 


38 


35 


27_ 


39 


19 


19 


3 


_0 


325 








31.8% 






591 


5 


B. 


6 


3 


5 


8 


7 


8 


7 


2 







46 




G. 


3 


2 


6 


5 


1_ 


10 


6 
55. 


5 

3% 


1 


— ^ 


39 

85 


6 


B. 
G. 






3 


3 


0_ 


1 


1 






-^ 


8 
















25. 


% 






8 


Tot 


:. B. 
G. 


963 
1137 


820 
943 


708 
791 


672 
740 


513 
608 


466 
535 


299 
371 


220 
269 


48 
76 


18 
18 


4727 
5488 



10.215 



18 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

Table III tells us that 459 boys and 561 girls have one failure 
each in the first semester of their high school work; 271 boys 
and the same number of girls have two failures in the first se- 
mester, and so on, for the ten semesters and for as many as six 
failures per pupil. The failures represented by these pupils give 
a total of 17,960. A distribution of the total failures per pupil, 
and the facts relative thereto, will be considered in Chapter IV 
of this study. 

The above distribution of Table III is repeated here in Table 
IV, so far as it relates to the failing graduates only. 

TABLE IV 
A Distribution of the Failing Pupils Who Graduate, According to 

IT, THE NUiMBER OF FAILURES PER PUPIL IN EACH SEMESTER 

g SEMESTERS 

°< 123456789 10 totals 

1 B. 110 131 137 150 162 139 120 118 19 11 1097 
G. 136 142 181 200 197 180 121 89 20 3 1269 

2366 
B. 34 49 61 69 61 75 47 ' 28 15 3 442 
G. 49 64 63 86 81 73 81 62 10 5 574 

1016 
B. 10 10 14 18 12 17 27 17 4 1 130 
G. 16 9 14 13 27 43 30 20 16 3 191 

321 

B. 3 2 2 3 4 8 6 '5 .. 33 
G. 2 3 6 6 5 16 9 12 3 .. 62 



61 
81 


75 
73 


50% 
47 28 
81 62 


15 

10 


3 
5 


12 
27 


17 
43 


53.2% 
27 17 
30 20 


4 
16 


1 
3 


4 
5 


8 
16 


67.6% 
6 5 
9 12 



3 




1 





4 


71.6% 
3 
1 2 






"o 


1 



78.6% 
1 







95 

14 



B 2 

G 1 

B. 1 1 '. 2 

G ... .... 

100% 

Tot.B. 157 192 214 237 240 240 204 163 48 15 1710 
G. 203 218 265 305 310 316 242 185 49 11 2104 

3814 

This table reads similarly to Table III. There is not the ele- 
ment of continuous dropping out to be considered, as in Table 
III, until after the sixth semester is passed, for no pupils graduate 
in less than three years. The failures represented in this table 
number 5,823. This same distribution will be the subject of 
further comment later on. It discloses some facts that Table 
III tends to conceal, for instance, that the greater number of 



How Extensive are the Failures? 19 

graduating pupils who have 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 failures in a semester 
are found after the end of the second year. 

4. Distribution of the Failures in Reference to the Sub- 
jects IN Which They Occur 

The following tabulation of failures will show how they were 
shared by both boys and girls in each of the school subjects 
which provided the failures here listed. 

Number of Failures Distributed by School Subjects 



Total Math. 


Eng. 


Latin 


Ger. 


Fr. 


Hist. 


Sci. 


Bus. 
Subj's. 


Span, or 
Greek 


B. 8348 2015 


1555 


1523 


917 


473 


571 


850 


424 


20 


G. 9612 2300 


1424 


1833 


812 


588 


1036 


1013 


593 


13 


Percent 


















of Total 24.1 


16.5 


18.7 


9.6 


5.9 


8.9 


10.3 


5.6 


.2 



The abbreviated headings above will be self-explanatory by 
reference to section 3 of Chapter I. The first line of numbers 
gives the failures for the boys, the second line for the girls. 
Mathematics has 24.1 per cent of all the failures for all the 
pupils. Latin claims 18.7 per cent and English 16.5 per cent of 
all the failures. These three subjects make a total of nearly 60 
per cent of the failures for the nine subject groups appearing 
here. But still this is only a partial statement of the facts as 
they are, since the total enrollment by subjects is an independent 
matter and far from being equally divided among all the subjects 
concerned. The subject enrollment may sometimes be relatively 
high and the percentage of failure for that subject correspond- 
ingly lower than for a subject with the same number of failures 
but a smaller enrollment. This fact becomes quite apparent 
from the following percentages taken in comparison with the 
ones just preceding: 

Percentages Enrolled in Each Subject of the Sum Total of the 
Subject Enrollments For All Pupils and All Semesters 



Math. 


Eng. 


Latin 


Ger. 


Fr. 


Hist. 


Sci. 


Bus. 
Subj's. 


Span, or 
Greek 


17.3 


24.0 


11.9 


8.5 


6.8 


10.2 


12.5 


8.3 


.5 



We note that the percentages for mathematics and English, 
which represent their portions of the grand total of subject en- 
rollments, are virtually the reverse of the percentages which 



20 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

designate the amount of total failures produced by the same two 
subjects. That means that the percentage of the total failures 
produced by mathematics is really greater than was at first ap- 
parent, while the percentages of failures for English is not so 
great relatively as the statement of the total failures above would 
alone indicate. In a similar manner, we note that Latin has 
18.7 per cent of all the failures, but its portion of the total en- 
rollment for all subjects is only 11.9 per cent. If the failures in 
this subject were in proportion to the enrollment, its percentage 
of the failures would be reduced by 6.8 per cent. On the other 
hand, if the failures for English were in the same proportion to 
the total as is its subject enrollment, it would claim 7.5 per cent 
more of all the failures. In the same sense, French, history, 
science, and the business subjects have a smaller proportion of 
all the failures than of all the subject enrollments. 

The comparison of failures by subjects may be continued still 
further by computing the percentage of failures in each subject 
as based on the number enrolled in that subject. Such per- 
centages are here presented for each subject. 

Percentage of the Number Taking the Subject Who Fail 
IN That Subject 



Latin 


Math. 


Ger. 


Fr. 


Hist. 


Sci. 


Eng. 


Bus. 

Subj's. 


Span, or 
Greek 


18.7 


16.0 


13.5 


11.6 


10.4 


9.8 


8.2 


8.0 


4.1 



It becomes evident at once that the largest percentage of fail- 
ures, based on the pupils taking the subject, is in Latin, although 
we have already found that mathematics has the greatest per- 
centage of all the failures recorded (p. 19). But here mathe- 
matics follows Latin, with German coming next in order as 
ranked by its high percentage of failure for those enrolled in 
the subject. History has the median percentage for the failures 
as listed for the nine subjects above. 

The failures as reported by subjects for other schools and 
other pupils will provide a comparison which may indicate some- 
thing of the relative standing of this group of schools in refer- 
ence to failures. The failures are presented below for thirteen 
high schools in New Jersey, involving 24,895 grades, as reported 
by D. C. Bliss^ in 1917. As the schools were reported singly, the 



How Extensive are the Failures? 21 

median percentage of failure for each subject is used here for 
our purpose. But Mr. Bliss' figures are computed from the pro- 
motion sheets for June, 1915, and include none of those who had 
dropped out. In this sense they are not comparable to the per- 
centages of failure as presented in this study. Yet with the one 
exception of Latin these median percentages are higher. The 
percentages as presented below for St. Paul* are in each case 
based on the total number taking the subject for a single se^ 
mester, and include about 4,000 pupils, in all the classes, inj the 
four high schools of the city.* 

The facts presented for St. Louis^ are for one school only, 
with 2,089 pupils, as recorded for the first half of the year 
1915-16. All foreign languages as reported for this school are 
grouped together. History is the only subject that has a per- 
centage of failure lower than that of the corresponding subjects 
for our eight schools. The figures for both St. Paul and St. 
Louis are based on the grades for all classes in school, but for 
only a single semester. One cannot avoid feeling that a state- 
ment of facts for so limited a period may or may not be depend- 
able and representative for all periods. The percentages for 
Paterson* are reported for about 4,000 pupils, in all classes, for 
two successive semesters, and are based on the number exam- 
ined. For Denver,^ the records are reported for 4,120 pupils, 
and cover a two-year period. The percentages for Butte^ are 
based on the records for 3,110 pupils, for one school semester. 
The figures reported by Rounds and Kingsbury** are for only 

Percentages of Failure by Subjects— Quoted for Other Schools 

Bus. 

Math, Latin Ger. Fren. Eng. Hist Sci. Subj's. 

13N. J. H. S's. 20.0 18.0 16.0 .. 14.0 11.0 .. 11.5 

St.Paul 218 13.6 14.3 17.0 10.0 10.9 7.3 11.7 

St. Louis 18.0 [ 16 ] 13.0 7.0 19.0 

Paterson 23.1 21.6 23.4 .. 12.2 13.9 18.3 8.5 

Denver 24.0 21.0 12.0 .. 11.7 11.0 17.0 11.0 

Butte 18.6 25.0 24.0 32.6 5.4 7.0 13.0 8.4 

R andK 24.7 . .. .. 18.5 

Our 8 H. S's... 16.0 18.7 13.5 11.6 8.2 10.4 9.8 8.0 

* It is a significant fact, and one worthy of note here, that the report for St. Paul is 
apparently the only one of the surveys which also states the number taking each subject, 
as well as the percentages of failure. Percentages alone do not tell the whole story, and 
they do not promote the further utilization of the facts to discover other relationships. 



22 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

two subjects, but for forty-six widely separated high schools, 
whose enrollment for these two subjects was 57,680. 

In some schools the reports were not available for all subjects. 
Tt is not at all probable, so far as information could be obtained, 
that the failures of the drop-out pupils for any of the schools 
were included in the percentages as reported above, or that the 
percentages are based on the total number in the given subjects, 
with the exception of one school. Moreover, it is certain for 
at least some of the schools that neither the failures of the drop- 
outs nor the pupils who were in the class for less than a whole 
semester were considered in the percentages above. So far, 
however, as these comparisons may be justified, the suggestion 
made in Chapter I that the schools included in this study are 
doubtless a superior group with respect to failures appears to be 
strengthened by the comparisons made above. 

It becomes more apparent, as we attempt to ofifer a statement 
of failures as taken from the various reports, that they are not 
truly comparable. The bases of such percentages are not at all 
uniform. The basis used most frequently is the number en- 
rolled at the end of the period rather than the total number 
enrolled for any class, for which the school has had to provide, 
and which should most reasonably form the basis of the per- 
centage of failure. Furthermore, the failures for pupils who 
drop out are not usually counted. Yet, in most of the reports, 
the situation is not clearly indicated for either of the facts re- 
ferred to. Still more difficult is the task of securing a general 
statement of failures by subjects, since the percentages are most 
frequently reported separately for each class, in each subject, 
and for different buildings, but with the number of pupils stated 
for neither the failures nor the enrollment. The St. Paul reporf* 
is an exception in this regard. 

To present the full situation it is indeed necessary to know 
the failures for particular teachers, subjects, and buildings, but 
it is also frequently necessary to be able to make a comparison 
of results for different systems. Consequently, in order to use 
the varied reports for the attempted comparison above, the plan 
was pursued of averaging the percentages as stated for the dif- 
ferent classes, semesters, and years of a subject, in each school 
separately, and then selecting the median school thus determined 



How Extensive are the Failures? 23 

as the one best representing the city or the system. This method 
was employed to modify the reports, and to secure the percent- 
ages as stated above for Denver, Patterson, and Butte. Any 
plan of averaging the percentages for the four years of English, 
or similarly for any other subject, may actually tend to misstate 
the facts, when the percentages or the numbers represented are 
not very nearly equal. But, in an incidental way, the difficulty 
serves to emphasize the inadequacy and the incomparability in 
the reporting of failures as found in the various studies, as well 
as to warn us of the hopelessness of reaching any conclusions 
apart from a knowledge of the procedure employed in securing 
the data. 

The basis is also provided for some interesting comparisons 
by isolating from the general distribution of failures by school 
subjects (p. 19) the same facts for the failing graduates. That 
gives the following distribution. 

The Failures by School Subjects For Graduates Only 

Total Math. Eng. Latin Ger. Fr. Hist. Sci. Bus. Span, or 

Subj's. Greek 
5803 B. 660 403 521 241 191 180 251 91 7 

6334 G. 782 347 673 257 240 410 394 162 12 
Per Cent 
of Totals 24.8 12.9 20.5 8.5 7.4 10.1 11. 4.3 .3 

Similar Percentages for the Non-Graduates 
Asabove23.6 18.3 17.7 10.1 5.3 8.4 10. 6.3 .1 

It is a noteworthy fact that the percentages of failure (based 
on the total failures for the graduates) run higher in mathe- 
rnatics, Latin, history, French, and science for the graduates than 
for the whole composite number (page 19). The non-graduates 
have a correspondingly lower percentage of failure in these sub- 
jects, as is indicated above. The school influences in respect to the 
failures of the non-graduates differ from those of the graduates 
chiefly in the fact that the failures of the former tend to occur 
to a greater extent in the earlier years of these subjects, since 
so many of the non-graduates are in the school for only those 
earlier years ; while the failures of the graduates range more 
widely and have a tendency to predominate in the upper years 
of the subject, as will be further emphasized in the later pages 
of this report (see also Table IV). 



24 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

5. Distribution of Pupils Dropping Out — Semesters — Ages 

Table V presents the facts concerning the time and the age at 
which the failing pupils drop out of school. Table VI furnishes 
the corresponding facts for the non-failing drop-outs. 

TABLE V 

Distribution of the Failing Non-Graduates, Showing the Semester 
" AND THE Age at the Time of Dropping Out n 











AGES 








ffl 




s 




13 14 


15 16 


17 


18 


19 


20 21 : 


22 1 


TOTALS 


1 


B. 


1 40 49 50 


18 





1 


1 . 




. 1 


160 




G. 


3 40 65 47 


23 


4 





. 




. 3 


185 






















345 


2 


B. 


. 9 56 88 


56 


22 


6 


2 . 




. 3 


242 




G. 


. 6 72 119 


61 


24 


3 


. 




. 6 


291 






















533 


3 


B. 


. 4 30 40 


23 


10 


7 






. 


114 




G. 


. 3 : 


55 51 


32 


13 


7 






. 1 


142 
256 


4 


B. 


. 1 : 


16 66 


86 


34 


16 


2 . 




. 3 


224 




G. 


1 


19 60 


70 


59 


18 


3 . 




. 


230 
454 


5 


B. 




2 12 


36 


21 


8 


4 . 




. 3 


86 




G. 




4 17 


48 


28 


9 


3 . 




. 1 


110 
196 


6 


B. 




1 6 


48 


52 


38 


10 . 




. 1 


156 




G. 




1 11 


52 


49 


26 


5 




. 2 


146 
302 


7 


B. 




2 


12 


35 


21 


7 





1 


78 




G. 




2 


15 


21 


15 


4 


1 


. 


59 
137 


8 


B. 







10 


23 


19 


19 


2 


2 


75 




G. 




2 


10 


31 


29 


10 


4 


2 3 


91 
166 


9 


B. 






1 


4 


4 


2 




1 1 


13 




G. 






1 


6 


12 


4 ". 







23 
36 


10 


B. 










1 


3 


3 


1 .. 


8 




G. 










4 


3 


3 


1 .. 


11 
19 


11 


B. 
G. 













2 




1 


.. 

1 .. 



4 
4 


Tot. 


B. 


1 54 U 


54 264 


290 


201 


120 


50 


6 


2 14 


1156 




G. 


3 50 ic 


^6 309 


312 


235 


123 


34 


9 


4 16 


1292 



2448 



Table V reads : In the first semester 1 boy and 3 girls drop 
out at age 13; 40 boys and 40 girls drop out at the age of 14; 
49 boys and 65 girls, at the age of 15. In this table, as else- 
where, age 15 means from 14^ to 15^4, and so on. Any drop- 



Hozv Extensive are the Failures? 



25 



out, as for the second semester, means either during or at the 
end of that semester. 

TABLE VI 

Distribution of the Non-Failing Non-Graduates, Showing the Sem- 

2 ESTER AND THE AGE AT THE TiME OF DROPPING OUT 















AGES 












13 14 15 


16 


17 


18 


19 


20 21 TOTALS 


1 


B. 17 118 141 


106 


39 


3 


4 


1 


1 430 




G 


11 159 235 


160 


51 


19 


4 


4 


643 






















1073 


2 


B 







7 49 


50 


18 


7 


3 





134 




G 




1 


1 59 


42 


31 


10 


7 


2 


163 

297 


3 . 


B 






7 


16 


11 


5 


1 





40 




G 






14 


22 


33 


15 


3 


2 


89 
129 


4 


B 






5 


13 


11 


10 


1 





1 41 




G 






7 


20 


31 


16 


2 


1 


1 78 

119 


5 


B 






1 


2 


9 


1 


2 





15 




G 









3 


10 


9 


4 


1 


27 42 


6 


B 






1 


4 


14 


3 


2 





24 




G 









5 


17 


13 


7 


3 


45 
69 


7 


B 











2 


2 


2 


1 


7 




G 








1 


2 


7 


1 


1 


12 
19 


8 
9 


B 
G 

B 
G 












1 
3 


1 
1 


1 
1 



1 


3 
5 

8 

1 




















1 


To 


t. B. ] 


7 Y. 


>5 204 


191 


104 


32 


16 


3 


2 694 






G. ] 


2 1/ 


^0 315 


253 


175 


92 


29 


16 


1 1063 



1757 



Table VI reads similarly to Table V. The distribution of the 
age totals for the pupils dropping out gives us medians which, 
for both boys and girls, fall within the 17-year group for the 
failing pupils, but within the 16-year group for the non-failing 
pupils. For Table V the mode of the distribution is at 17, but 
for Table VI it is at 15. The percentages of dropping out for 
each age group are given below. First, all the pupils of Tables 
V and VI are grouped together for this purpose, then the boys 
and the girls for Tables V and VI are considered separately to 
facilitate the comparison of facts. 



26 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

Percentages in Each Age Group of the Total Number Dropping Out 

Ages 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 

Percent 0.8 9.5 20.7 24.2 21.0 13.3 6.8 2.4 1.2 

It is readily seen from the above percentages that, as would 
be expected, the drop-outs are most frequent for the very ages 
which are most common in the high school. There is no special 
accumulation of drop-outs for either the earlier or the later ages. 
But, if in any semester we consider the drop-outs for each age 
as a percentage of the total pupils represented for that age, the 
facts are more fully revealed, as is indicated below for certain 
semesters. 

Percentages of Drop-outs for Each Age, on the Totals for Such Age 
IN the First, Second and Fourth Semesters 

AGES 

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 

Semester 1 6.8 18.2 23.1 32.6 38.3 35.0 40.0 40 

Semester2 4.0 8.1 14.8 18.3 22.2 30.0 40.0 33.0 

Semester4 9.0 11.8 12.5 16.5 24.6 35.2 50.0 

If these semesters may be taken as indicative of all, an almost 
steady increase will be expected in the percentages of drop-outs 
as the ages of the pupils rise. It follows, then, that the older 
ages have the higher percentages of drop-outs when this basis 
of the computation is employed. We may, however, make some 
helpful comparisons of the ages of drop-outs for boys and for 
girls by merely using the percentages of total drop-outs for the 
purpose. 

Percentages of Failing Drop-Outs in Each Age Group, for Boys and 
Girls Separately 



Boys 
Girls 





ages 










13 


14 15 16 


17 18 


19 


20 


21 





4.6 12.5 22.8 


25.1 17.4 


10.3 


4.3 


1.9 


.2 


3.8 15.1 23.9 


24.1 19.0 


9.5 


2.6 


2.2 



Here it appears that, of all the boys and girls who fail before 
dropping out, the school loses at the age of 14, for example, 4.6 
per cent for the boys and 3.8 per cent for the girls. As a matter 
of mere convenience, the percentages for age 21 are made to 
include also the undistributed pupils in Table V. 



How Extensive are the Failures? 27 

Percentages of the Non-Failing Drop-Outs in Each Age Group, for 
Boys and Girls Separately 



Boys. 
Girls. 





AGES 










13 


14 15 16 


17 


18 


19 


20 


2.4 


18.0 29.4 27.1 


15.0 


4.4 


2.3 


0.7 


1.1 


16.0 29.6 23.8 


16.4 


8.6 


2.7 


1.6 



These percentages are computed from the age totals in Table 
VI, just as the ones preceding are computed from Table V. It 
seems worthy of note here that close to 50 per cent of the non- 
failing drop-outs occur under 16 years of age, for both the boys 
and the girls ; but that the number of the failing pupils who drop 
out does not reach 20 per cent for the boys or the girls in these 
same years. It is likewise remarkable in these distributions that 
the percentages for boys and for girls show such slight differ- 
ences in either of the two groupings. 

Summary of Chapter II 

If to the recorded failures the virtual but unrecorded ones 
are added, the percentage of failing pupils is 66 per cent. 
This percentage is higher for the boys than for the girls by a 
difference of 6 per cent. 

Of the graduating pupils, 58.1 per cent fail one or more times. 

Of the non-failing non-graduates 78 per cent are lost from 
school by the end of their first year. But the failing non-grad- 
uates have not lost such a percentage before the end of the third 
year. 

The percentage of pupils failing increases for the first four 
semesters, and lowers but little for two more semesters. One 
third to one half of the pupils fail in each semester to seventh. 

In the distribution of failures by ages and semesters, 86 per 
cent are found from ages 15 to 18 inclusive. Thirty-four per 
cent of the failures occur after the end of the second year, when 
52.2 per cent of the pupils have been lost and others are leaving 
continuously. 

Mathematics, Latin, and English head the list in the percent- 
ages of total failures, and together provide nearly 60 per cent of 
the failures; but English has a large subject-enrollment to bal- 
ance its count in failures. 



28 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

Mathematics, Latin, and German fail the highest percentages 
on the number of pupils taking the subjects. 

In several subjects the percentages of failure based on the 
total failures are higher for the graduates than for the non- 
graduates. 

For the pupils dropping out without failure the median age is 
at 16, with the mode at 15. For the failing drop-outs both the 
median and the mode are at the age of 17. Nearly 50 per cent 
of the non-failing drop-outs occur under age 16, but not 20 per 
cent of the failing non-graduates are gone by that age. The 
percentage of drop-outs is higher for older pupils. 

References 

1. Kelley, T. L. "A Study of High School and University Grades, with 

Reference to Their Intercorrelation and the Causes of Elimination," 
Journal of Educational Psychology, 6 :365. 

2. Johnson, G. R. , "Qualitative Elimination in High School," School 

Review, 18:680. 

3. Bliss, D. C. " High School Failures," Educational Administration and 

Supervision, Vol. 3. 

4. Strayer, G. D., Coffman, L. D., Prosser, C. A. Report of a Survey of 

the School System of St. Paul, Minnesota, 

5. Meredith, A. B. Survey of the St. Louis Public Schools, 1917, Vol. HI, 

p. 51. 

6. Annual Report of the Board of Education, Paterson, New Jersey, 1915. 

7. Bobbitt, J. F. Report of the School Survey of Denver, 1916. 

8. Strayer, G. D. A Survey of the Public Schools of Butte, 1914. 

9. Rounds, C. R., Kingsbury, H. B. " Do Too Many Students Fail? " 

School Review, 21:585. 



CHAPTER III 

WHAT BASIS IS DISCOVERABLE FOR PROGNOSTI- 
CATING THE OCCURRENCE OF OR THE NUM- 
BER OF FAILURES ? 

1. Attendance, Mental or Physical Defects, and 
Size of Classes Are Possible Factors 

' Any definite factors available for the school that have a prog- 
nostic value in reference to school failures will help to perform 
a function quite comparable to the science of preventive medicine 
in its field, and in contrast with the older art of doctoring the 
malady after it has been permitted to develop. Such prognosti- 
cation of failure, however, need not imply a complete knowledge 
of the causes of the failures. It may simply signify that in cer- 
tain situations the causes are less active or are partly overcome 
by other factors. 

Perhaps one of the simplest factors with a prognostic value 
on failure may be found in the facts of attendance. Persistent 
or repeated absence from school may reach a point where it 
tends to affect the number of failures. It happened, unfortu- 
nately, that the reports for attendance were incomplete or lack- 
ing in a considerable portion of the records employed in this 
study. Consequently the influence of attendance is given no 
especial consideration in these pages, except as explained in 
Chapter I, that the pupil must have been present enough of any 
semester to secure his subject grades, else no failure is counted 
and no time is charged to his period in school. In this connec- 
tion. Dr. C. H. Keyes^ found in a study of elementary school 
pupils that of 1,649 pupils losing four weeks or more in a single 
year 459 belonged to the accelerate pupils, 647 to those arrested, 
and 543 to pupils normal in their school work. He accredits 
such large loss of time as almost invariably the result of illness 
and of contagious disease. He also says, " Prolonged absence 

29 



30 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

from school is appreciable in producing arrest especially when it 
amounts to more than 25 days in one school year." But the dis- 
eases of childhood, with the resultant absence, are less prevalent 
in the high school years than earlier. Furthermore, the losses 
due to change of residence will not be met with here, for, as 
explained in Chapter I, no transferred pupils are included sub- 
sequent to the time of the transference either to or from the 
school. 

The influence of physical or mental defects also deserves 
recognition here as a possible factor relative to school failures, 
although this study has no data to offer of any statistical value 
in that regard. A few pupils in high school may actually reach 
the limits prescribed by their ' intelligence quotient '- or general 
mental ability, or perhaps, as Bronner^ so interestingly points 
out, be handicapped by some special mental disability. If such 
be true, they will doubtless be found in the number of school 
drop-outs later referred to as failing in 50 per cent or more of 
their work ; but we have no measurement of intelligence re- 
corded for them to serve our purposes of prognostication. In 
the matter of physical defects alone, the report of Dr. L. P. 
Ayres'* on a study of 3,304 pupils, ten to fourteen years old, in 
New York City, states that "In every case except in that of 
vision the children rated as ' dull ' are found to be suffering from 
physical defects to a greater degree than ' normal ' or ' bright ' 
children." The defects of vision, which is the exception noted, 
may be even partly the result of the studious habits of the pupils. 
Bronner^ remarks on the " relationships between mental and 
physical conditions," and also on how " the findings on tests were 
altogether different after the child had been built up physically." 
But Gulick and Ayres'"* conclude that it is evident from the facts 
at hand that if vision were omitted the percentage of defects 
would dwindle and become comparatively small among the upper 
grades. This would probably be still more true for the high 
school ; but this whole field has not yet been completely and thor- 
oughly investigated. 

It would be very desirable to have ascertained the size of the 
classes in which the failures were most frequent, as well as the 
relative success of the pupils repeating subjects in larger or in 
smaller classes. But, as such facts were unobtainable, it is per- 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 31 

mitted here simply to recognize the possible influence of this 
factor. It seems deserving in itself of careful and special study. 
From the standpoint of the pupil, the kind of subject, the kind of 
teacher, and the sort of discipline emiployed will tend to influ- 
ence the size of class to be called normal, and to make it a sort 
of variable. " Thirty pupils is regarded by the North Central 
Association as the maximum size of class in high school.*' Surely 
the size of class will react on the pupil by affecting the teacher's 
spirit and energy. Reference is made by Hall-Quest^ to an 
experiment, whose author is not named, in which 829 pupils 
stated that their " most helpful teachers were pleasant, cheerful, 
optimistic, enthusiastic, and young." If such be true then the 
very large size of classes will tend to reduce the teacher's help- 
fulness. 

2. The Employment of the School Entering Age for 

Prognosis 

A promising but less emphasized basis of prognosticating the 
school success or failure of the pupils is found in the employment 
of the school entering ages for this purpose. The distribution 
of all the pupils (except 30 undistributed ones, for whom the 
records were incomplete), according to entering age, is here pre- 
sented, independently for the boys and for the girls. 

Distribution of Pupils by Their Entrance Ages to High School 











AGES 












Total 12 


13 


14 


15 


16 


17 


18 


19 


20 


Undis- 
tributed 


2646 B. 16 


211 


820 


900 


497 


148 


23 


10 


7 


14 


3495 G. 8 


259 


1124 


1217 


614 


194 


51 


10 


8 


16 



The entering ages of these 6,141 pupils are distributed from 
12 to 20, with 30 of them fon whom the age records were not 
given. The median age for all the entrants is 15.3. But in 
order to compare this with the median entering age (14.9) of 
the 1,033 pupils reported by King^ for the Iowa City high school, 
or with the median entering age (14.5) of 1000 high school pupils 
in New York City, as reported by Van Denburg,^ it is neces- 
sary to reduce these medians to the same basis of age classifica- 
tion. Since age 15 for this study starts at 14^^, then 15.3 would 



32 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

be only 14.8 (15.3 — .5) as by their classification. The percent- 
ages of the total number of pupils for each age are given belo^^'. 

Percentages of Pupils for Each Entering Age 

AGES 
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 

Undistributed 

Total 0.4 7.6 31.6 34.4 18.1 5.5 1.2 1.0 

Boys 0.6 8.0 31.0 37.8 18.8 5.6 0.8 1.1 

Girls 0.2 7.4 32.4 34.8 17.5 5.5 1.4 1.0 

We see that 84 per cent of the pupils enter at age 14, 15, and 
16, or, what is perhaps more important, that nearly 40 per cent 
enter under 15 years of age. The similarity of percentages for boys 
and for girls is pronounced. The slight advantage of the boys 
for ages 12 and 13 may be due to home influence in restricting 
the early entrance of the girls, thus causing a corresponding 
superiority for the girls at age 14. The mode of this percentage 
distribution is at 15 for both boys and girls. 

What portion of each entering-age-group has no failures? 
This question and the answer presented below direct our atten- 
tion to the superiority of the pupils of the earlier entering ages. 
That these groups of earlier ages of entrance are comprised of 
pupils selected for their capabilities is shown by the successive 
decrease in the percentages of the non-failing as the ages of 
their entrance increases, up to age 18. 

Distribution of the Pupils Who Do Not Fail, for Each 
Entering- Age-Group 

AGES 

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 
Totals ■ 

1001 B 11 102 320 309 186 56 9 4 4 

1574 G 3 133 522 545 255 73 29 7 6 



% of Entrants. 58.0 50.0 43.4 40.0 39.8 37.7 55.0 

Here is definite evidence that the pupils of the earlier entering 
ages are less likely to fail in any of their school subjects than are 
the older ones. Those entering at ages 12 or 13 escape school 
failures altogether for 50 per cent or more of their numbers. 
Those entering at aee 14 are somewhat less successful but still 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 33 

seem superior to those of later entrance ages. It is encouraging, 
then, that these three ages of entrance include nearly 40 per cent 
of the 6,141 pupils. There is, of course, nothing in this situation 
to justify any deduction of the sort that pupils entering at the 
.age of 17 would have been more successful had they been sent 
to high school earlier, except that had they been able to enter 
high school earlier they would have represented a different selec- 
tion of ability by that fact alone. There is also a sort of selec- 
tion operative for the pupils entering at ages 18, 19, or 20, which 
tends to account at least partly for the rise in the percentage of 
the non-failing for these years. It is safe to believe that for the 
most part only the more able, ambitious, and purposeful indi- 
viduals are likely to display the energy required or to discern 
the need of their entering high school when they have reached 
the age of 18 or later. The appeal of school athletics will in 
this case seem very inadequate to explain their entrance so late, 
since the girls predominate so strongly for these years. Then it 
may be contended further that the added maturity and experi- 
ence of those later entrants may partly compensate for a lack of 
native ability, if such be the case, and thereby result in a rela- 
tively high percentage of non-failing pupils for this group. 

It is readily conceded that the avoidance of failure in school 
work serves as only one criterion for gauging the pupils' accom- 
plishment. It is accordingly important to inquire how the dif- 
ferent age-groups of school entrants compare with reference to 
the persistence and ability which is represented by school grad- 
uation. A truly striking array of percentages follows in refer- 
ence to the question of how many of the entering pupils in each 
age-group do graduate. 

Distribution of the Pupils Graduating for Each Entering-Age Group 

AGES 



Totals 


12 


13 


14 


15 


16 


17 


18 


19 


20 


796 B 


14 


115 


290 


253 


99 


20 


2 


1 


2 


1140G 


5 


151 


465 


363 


124 


26 


5 


1 





% of Entrants. 


79.1 


56.6 


38.8 


29.9 


20.0 


13.4 


9.4 


10.0 


13.3 



These percentages bear convincing testimony in support of the 
previous evidence that the pupils of the earlier entering years 



34 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

are highly selected in ability. Of all the high school entrants 
they are the * most fit,' the least likely to fail, and the most cer- 
tain to graduate. The percentage of pupils graduating who 
entered at the age of 12 is approximately four times that of 
pupils who entered at the age of 16. Thirteen is more than 
four times as fruitful of graduates as age 17 ; fourteen bears a 
similar relationship to age 18; and the percentage for fifteen is 
three times that for age 19, as is apparent from the above figures. 
The fact that the decline of these percentages ceases at age 19 
is probably due to the greater maturity of such later entrants. 

When we make inquiry as to what portion of the graduates in 
each of the above groups ' goes through ' in four years or less, 
we get the series of percentages indicated below. 

Percentage of the Graduates Who Finish in Four Years or Less, 
For Each of the Entering-Age Groups 

Ages 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 

%ofEachGroup 84.2 85.7 75.8 79.5 84.3 80.4 100 

It appears that the ones in the older age-groups who do grad- 
uate are not so handicapped in reference to the time requirement 
for graduation as we might have expected them to be from the 
facts of the preceding pages. Perhaps that fact is partly 
accounted for by the not unusual tendency to restrain- the 
more rapid progress of the younger pupils or to promote the 
older ones partly by age, so that by our school procedure the 
younger and the brighter pupils may at times actually be more 
retarded, according to mental age, than are the older and slower 
ones. 

Since the same teachers, the same schools, and the same ad- 
ministrative policy were involved for the different entrance-age 
groups, the prognostic value of the factor of age at entrance will 
seem to be unimpaired, whether it operates independently as a 
gauge of rank in mental ability, or conjointly with and indicative 
of the varying influence on these pupils of other concomitant 
factors, such as the difference of economic demands, the differ- 
ence of social interests, the difference in permanence of con- 
flicting habits of the individual, or the difference in effectiveness 
of the school's appeal as adapted for the several ages. One may 
contend, and with some success, that the high school regime is. 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 35 

better adjusted to the younger pupils, with the consequent result 
that they are more successful in its requirements. The distrac- 
tions of more numerous social interests may actually accompany 
the later years of school age. In reference to the social distrac- 
tions of girls, Margaret Slattery says,^° " This mania for ' going ' 
seizes many of our girls just when they need rest and natural 
pleasures, the great out-of-doors, and early hours of retiring." 
But surely such distractions are not peculiar to the girls alone. 
The economic needs that arise at the age of sixteen and later are 
often considered to constitute a pressing factor regarding the 
continuance in school. But VanDenburg^ was convinced by the 
investigation, in New York City, of 420 rentals for the families 
of pupils that " on the whole the economic status of these pupils 
seems to be only a slight factor in their continuance in school." 
A similar conclusion was reached by Wooley,^^ in Cincinnati, after 
investigating 600 families, in which it was estimated that 73 per 
cent of the families did not need the earnings of the children 
who left school to go to work. The corresponding report by a 
commissions^ in Massachusetts shows 76 per cent. The same 
facts for New York City^^ indicate that 80 per cent of such fami- 
lies are independent of the child's wages. But Holley concludes,^* 
from a study of certain towns in Illinois, that " there is a high 
correlation between the economic, educational, and social advan- 
tages of a home and the number of years of school which its 
children receive." It will hardly be denied that even aside from 
the relation of the family means to the school persistence, the 
economic needs may have a direct influence on the failing of the 
children in their school work, either because home conditions 
may be decidedly unfavorable for required home study, or be- 
cause of the larger portion of time that must be given to outside 
employment, with its consequent reduction of the normal vitality 
of the individual or of his readiness to study. But, in spite of 
the possible interrelationship of these factors, it still appears that 
the school entrance age of pupils will serve as a valuable sort of 
educational compass to foretell in part the probable direction of 
their later accomplishment. 



36 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

3. The Amount of Failure at Each Age and Its Relation 
TO THE Possibility of Failing for That Age 

We have considered at some length the prognostic value of 
the age at entrance. Here we shall briefly consider the prog- 
nostic value of age in reference to the time when failures occur 
and the amount of failure for such age. If we were to total 
all the failures for a given age, as shown in Table I, what part 
will that form of the total subjects taken by these pupils at the 
time the failures occur? In other words, what are the per- 
centages formed by the total failures on the possibility of failing, 
for the same pupils and the same semesters, considered by age 
groups? The summary line of Table I gives the total failures 
according to the ages at which they occurred. The number of 
pupils sharing in each group of these failures is also known by 
a separate tabulation. Then the full number of subjects per 
pupil is taken as 4^^, since approximately 50 per cent of the 
pupils take five or more subjects each semester and the other 
50 per cent take four or less (see p. 61). With the number of 
pupils given, and with a schedule of 4^2 subjects per pupil, we 
are able to compute the percentages which the failures form of 
the total subjects for these failing pupils at the time. These 
percentages are given below. 

The Percentages Formed by Failures at Each Age on the Possibilities 
OF Failing at Th\t Age and Time, for the Same Pupils 

Ages 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 

% 36.6 38.0 37.9 40.9 40.8 41.2 41.3 42.0 42.7 

These percentages are computed from the data secured in Table I, as noted above. 

There is an almost unbroken rise in these percentages from 
36.6 for age 13 to 42.7 for age 21. Not only do a greater 
number of the older pupils fail, as was previously indicated, but 
they also have a greater percentage of failure for the subjects 
which they are taking. It seems appropriate here to offer a 
caution that, in reading the above percentages, one must not 
conclude that all of age 14 fail in 38 per cent of their work, 
but rather that those who do fail at age 14 fail in 38 per cent of 
their work for that semester. The evidence does not seem to 
indicate that the maturity of later years operates to secure any 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 37 

general reduction of these percentages. The prognostic value 
of such facts seems to consist in leading us to expect a greater 
percentage of failures (on the total subjects) from the older 
pupils who fail than from the younger ones who fail. If it were 
possible to translate the above percentages to a basis of the pos- 
sibility of failure for all pupils, instead of the possibility for 
failing pupils only, the disparity for the different ages would 
become more pronounced, as the earlier ages have more non- 
failing pupils. But this we are not able to do, as our data are 
not adequate for that purpose. 

4. The Initial Record in High School for Prognosis of 

Failure 

For this purpose the pupil record for the first year, in refer- 
ence to failures, is deemed more adequate and dependable than 
the record for the first semester only. Accordingly, the pupils 
have been classified on their first year's record into those who 
had 0, 1, 2, 3, and up to 7 or more failures. Then these groups 
were further distributed into those who failed 0, 1, 2, 3, and up 
to 7 or more times after the first year. From such a double 
distribution we may get some indication of what assurance the 
first year's record offers on the expectation of later failures. 
Table VII presents these facts. 

Table VII is read in this manner : Of all the pupils who have 
failures the first year (805 boys, and 1,129 girls) 397 boys and 
672 girls have failures later, 105 boys and 130 girls have 1 
failure later, 77 boys and 98 girls have 2 failures later, while 
68 boys and 63 girls have seven or more failures later. The 
column of totals to the right gives the pupils for each number 
of failures for the first year. The line of totals at the bottom 
gives the pupils for each number of failures subsequent to the 
first year. 

The table includes 3,508 pupils, since those who did not re- 
main in school more than three semesters are not included (1,120 
boys, 1,513 girls). Obviously, those who do not stay more than 
one year would have no subsequent school record, and those 
remaining only a brief time beyond one year would not have a 
record of comparable length. It seems quite significant, too, for 
the purposes of our prognosis, that of the 2,633 pupils dropping 



38 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

out in three semesters or less only about 43 per cent have ever 
failed (boys — 46 per cent, girls — 41 per cent). In contrast to 
this, nearly 70 per cent (69.6) of those continuing in school 
more than three semesters fail one or more times. Those who 
drop out without failure, in the three semesters or less, con- 
stitute nearly 60 per cent of the total non-failing pupils (2,568), 
but the failing pupils who drop out in that same period consti- 
tute less than 32 per cent of the total who fail (3,573). This 
situation received some emphasis in Chapter II and will be fur- 
ther treated in Chapter IV, under the comparison of the failing 
and non-failing groups. 

TABLE VII 

SUBSEQXJENT RECORD OF FAILURES FOR PUPILS FAILING 1, 2, 3, ETC., TiMES 

THE First Year 

0« failures SUBSEQUENT TO FIRST YEAR 

1^ 123456 7+ TOTALS 

» tn 

B 397 105 77 50 47 37 24 68 805 
G 672 130 98 60 53 27 26 63 1129 

1069 235 175 110 100 64 50 131 1934 

1 B 46 43 34 33 35 21 15 46 273 
G' 65 43 53 33 33 19 17 67 330 

111 86 87 66 68 40 32 113 603 

2 B 22 24 23 23 30 21 13 57 213 
G". ; . . 42 32 27 21 22 13 15 83 255 

64 56 50 44 52 34 28 140 468 

3 B 7 5 16 10 10 13 10 30 101 
G"..'.. 8 9 7 10 17 6 7 41 105 

15 14 23 20 27 19 17 71 206 

4 B ... 6 8 5 7 7 11 7 23 74 
G . . 8 7 5 6 10 8 4 27 75 

14 15 10 13 17 19 11 50 149 

5 B 3 1 2 1 5 3 11 26 

G....5 9 5 6 5 4 2 14 50 

8 10 5 8 6 9 5 25 76 

6 B 1 4 2 1 1 1 10 20 

G..2 122620621 

2 2 6 4 7 3 1 16 41 

7+B 3 2 1 1 2 5 14 

G 1 2 1 1 5 2 5 17 

4421622 10 31 

Tot. B . 484 189 160 127 132 109 75 250 1526 

G 803 233 198 139 151 81 71 306 1982 

1287 422 358 266 283 190 146 556 3508 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 39 

Referring directly now to Table VII, we find that 44.7 per 
cent of those not failing the first year do fail later. Of all those 
who fail the first year, 13.8 per cent escape any later failures. 
Of all the pupils included in this table 15.8 per cent have 7 or 
more failures, while of those failing in the first year 27 per cent 
later have 7 or more failures. For the number included in this 
table 30.4 per cent have no failures assigned to them. 

Percentage of First Year Failing Groups, Who Later Have No Failures 

No. of F's. in First Year 1 2 3 4 5 67 + 

Per Cent of Groups Having 
no Failures Later 18.4 13.7 7.2 9.4 10.5 5.0 12.9 

About the same percentage of the boys and of the girls (near 
60 per cent) is represented in Table VII. The girls have an 
advantage over the boys of about 8 per cent for those belonging 
to the group with no failures, and of about 1 per cent for the 
group with seven or more failures. 

No unconditional conclusion seems justified by this table. In 
the first year's record of failures there are good grounds for the 
promise of later performance. We may safely say that those 
who do not fail the first year are much less likely to fail later, 
and that if they do fail later, they have less accumulation of 
failures. Yet some of this group have many failures after the 
first year, and others who have several failures the first year have 
none subsequently. Generally, however, the later accumulations 
are in almost direct ratio to the earlier record, and the later non- 
failures are in inverse ratio to the debits of the first year. 

5. The Prognosis of Failures by the Subject Selection 
From the distribution of failures by school subjects as pre- 
sented in Chapter II, this will seem to be the easiest and almost 
the surest of all the factors thus far considered to employ for a 
prognosis of failure. For of all pupils taking Latin we may 
confidently expect an average of a little less than one pupil in 
every five to fail each semester. For the entire number taking 
mathematics, the expectation of failure is an average of about 
one in six for each semester. German comes next, and for each 
semester it claims for failure on the average nearly one pupil in 



40 ScJiool Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

every seven taking it. Similarly French claims for failure one 
in every nine ; history, one in every ten ; English and business 
subjects, less than one in every twelve. It will be noted that the 
average on a semester basis is employed in this part of the com- 
putation. Consequently, it is not the same as saying that 
such a percentage of pupils fail at some time, in the subject. 
The pupil who fails four times in first year mathematics is in- 
tentionally regarded here as representing four failures. Like- 
wise, the pupil who completes four years of Latin without failure 
represents eight successes for the subject in calculating these per- 
centages. Every recorded failure for each pupil is thus ac- 
counted for. 

It was also noted in Chapter II that the percentages of the 
total failures run higher in mathematics, Latin, history, and 
science, for the graduates than for the non-graduates. This 
fact is not due to the greater number of failures of graduates in 
the earlier semesters, when most of the non-graduate failures 
occur, but to the increase of failures for the graduates in the 
later years, as is disclosed in Tables II and IV. Accordingly, 
we may say that those two subjects which are most productive 
of school failures are increasingly fruitful of such results in the 
upper years. This does not seem to be the usual or accepted 
conviction. Certain of the school principals have expressed the 
assurance that it would be found otherwise. Such deception is 
easily explainable, for the number of failures show a marked re- 
duction, and the rise of percentages is consequently easily over- 
looked. It is quite possible, too, that in some individual schools 
there is not such a rise of the percentages of failure for the 
graduates in any of the school subjects. In a single one of the 
eight schools reported here neither Latin nor mathematics showed 
a higher percentage of failure for the graduate pupils over the 
non-graduates. In the other seven schools the graduates had 
the higher percentage in one or both of these subjects. 

6. The Time Period and the Number of Failures 

The statement that the number of failures will be greater for 
the failing pupils who remain in school the longer time may seem 
rather commonplace. But it will not seem trite to state that the 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 41 

percentage of the total failures on the total subject enrollments 
increases by school semesters up to the seventh ; that the per- 
centage of possible failures for all graduating pupils increases 
likewise; or that the failures per pupil in each single semester 
tend to increase as the time period extends to the later semesters. 
Yet radical as these statements may sound, they are actually 
substantiated by the facts to be presented. 

Percentage of the Total Failures on the Total Subject Enrollment, 

BY Semesters 

Semester. 123456789, 10 
Percent. 11.5 13.9 14.5 15.1 14.5 15.3 12.1 9.9 10.9 6.2 

The 808 pupils who received no marks, and many of whom 
dropped out early in the first semester, are not included in the 
subject enrollment for the above percentages. Otherwise the 
enrollments taken are for the beginning of each semester and 
inclusive of all the pupils. These percentages rise from 11.5 in 
the first semester to 15.3 in the sixth semester. Then the per- 
centages drop off, doubtless due to the increasing effect by this 
time of the non-failing graduates on the total enrollment. The 
graduates alone are next considered in this respect. 

Percentages of the Total Failures for the Graduates on the Total 
Subject Enrollment for Graduates, by Semesters 

Semester ..1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Per Cent.. 5.9 6.6 7.8 9.1 9.2 10.5 9.1 7.3 8.8 5,2 

These percentages are based on the total possibility of failure, 
and reach their highest point in the sixth semester, where the 
percentage of failure is nearly twice that for the first semester. 
These same facts may be effectively presented also by the per- 
centages of such failures for the graduates on the total subject 
enrollment for only the failing graduates in each semester. 

Percentages of the Total Failures for the Graduates on the Total 
Subject Enrollment for Failing Graduates, by Semesters 

Semester ..1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Per Cent. .31.4 31.2 31.8 32.7 32.3 36.6 37.5 37.4 38.0 36.0 



42 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

The percentages here are limited to the total possibilities of 
failure for those graduates who do fail in each semester. They 
reach the highest point in the ninth semester, with a gradual 
increase from the first. The high point is reached later in this 
series than in the one immediately preceding, because while the 
percentage of pupils failing decreases in the final semesters 
(p. 14), there is an increase in the number of failures per failing 
pupil (Table IV). 

This increase of percentages by semesters for the graduates 
on the total possibility of failure, as just noted, is due to an 
actual increase in the number of failures for the later semesters. 
By the distribution of failures in Table II more than 56 per cent 
of the failures are found after the completion of the second year, 
in spite of the fact that about 10 per cent of the pupils who 
graduate do so in three or three and a half years. The failures 
of the graduates are simply the more numerous after the first 
two years in school. That this situation is no accident due to 
the superior weight of any single school in the composite group, 
is readily disclosed by turning to the units which form the com- 
posite. For these schools the percentages of the graduates' fail- 
ures that are found after the second year range from 40 per cent 
to 66 per cent. In only three of the schools are such percentages 
under 50 per cent, while in three others they are above 60 per cent. 

Further confirmation of how the increase of failures accom- 
panies the pupils who stay longer in school is offered in the 
facts of Table IV. Here are indicated the number of pupils 
who before graduating fail 1, 2, 3, etc., times, in semesters 1, 
2, 3, etc., up to 10. Of all the occurrences of only one failure 
per pupil in a semester, 50 per cent are distributed after the 
fourth semester. In this same period (after the fourth semes- 
ter) are found 53.2 per cent of those with two failures in a 
semester; 67.6 per cent of those with three failures in a se- 
mester ; 71.6 per cent of those having four ; 78.6 per cent of those 
having five; and all of those having six failures in a single se- 
mester. One could almost say that the longer they stay the 
more they fail. 

The statements presented herein regarding the relative increase 
of failures for at least the first three years in school are likely to 
arouse some surprise among that portion of the people in the pro- 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 43 

fession, with whom the converse of this situation has been quite 
generally accepted as true. Such an impression has indeed not 
seemed unwarranted according to some reports, but the responsi- 
bility for it must be due in part to the manner of presenting the 
data, so that at times it actually serves to misstate or to conceal 
certain important features of the situation. Since the dropping out 
is heaviest in the early semesters, and since the school undertakes 
the expense of providing for all who enter, it does not seem to 
to be a correct presentation of the facts to compute the per- 
centage of failure on only the pupils who finish the whole se- 
mester. Such a practice tends to assign an undue percentage 
of failures to the earlier semesters, one that is considerably too 
high in comparison with that of the later semesters where the 
dropping out becomes relatively light. It is not sufficient to re- 
port merely what part of our final product is imperfect, instead 
of reporting, as do most institutions outside of the educational 
field, what part of all that is taken in becomes waste product. 
This situation is sufficiently grievous to demand further comment. 
In his study of the New Jersey high schools. Bliss states^^ 
that one of the striking facts found is the " steady decrease of 
failure from the freshman to the senior year." If we bear in 
mind that Bliss used only the promotion sheets for his data, and 
took no account of the drop-outs preceding promotion, and if 
we then estimate that an average of 10 per cent may drop out 
before the end of the first semester (the percentage is 13.2 for 
our eight schools), then the percentages of failure recorded 
for the first year will be reduced by one-eleventh of their 
own respective amounts for each school reported by Bliss, 
as we translate the percentages to the total enrollment 
basis. As a consequence of such a procedure, Bliss' per- 
centages, as reported for the second year, will be as high 
as or higher than those for the first year in six of the ten 
schools concerned, and nearly equal in two more of the schools. 
It is also evident that his percentages of failure as reported for 
the junior and senior years are not very different from each 
other in six of the ten schools, although there is no inclusion of 
the drop-outs in the percentages stated. The only pronounced 
or actual decrease in the percentages of failures as Bliss reports 
them, occurs between the sophomore and junior years, and it is 



44 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

doubtless a significant fact that this decided drop appears at the 
time and place where the opportunity for elective subjects is 
first offered in many schools. Yet apparently it has not seemed 
worth while to most persons who report the facts of failure to 
compute separately from the other subjects the percentages for 
the 3- and 4-year required subjects. 

A rather small decline is shown in the percentages of failure 
for the successive semesters, as quoted below for 2,481 high 
school pupils of Paterson^® (the average of two semesters), al- 
though these percentages are based upon the number of pupils 
examined at the completion of the semester. It may further be 
noted that these percentages do not follow the same pupils by 
semesters, but state the facts for successive classes of pupils. 
The same criticisms may be offered for the percentages as quoted 
from Wood^^ for 435 pupils. 

Percentages of Pupils Failing, by Seniesters 

semesters 

12345678 

Paterson 17.8 18.4 16.7 15.0 15.6 11.6 9.4 7.4 

Wood 24.5 14.5 29.5 30.0 31.0 7.9 16.2 

0Brien(p.41) 11.5 13.9 14.5 15.1 14.5 15.3 12.1 9.9 

The above series of percentages tend to agree at least in show- 
ing little or no decline in the percentages of failure for the first 
five or six semesters in school. 

Another tendency to conceal important features in relation to 
the facts of school failures may be found in the grouping to- 
gether of non-continuous and continuous subjects, the latter of 
which are generally required. F. W. Johnson found in the Uni- 
versity of Chicago High School^® that the percentage of failures 
by successive years indicated little or no decrease for mathe- 
matics and for English (which were 3- and 4-year subjects re- 
spectively). The figures were based on the records for a period 
of two years. In regard to St. Paul, it was possible to compute 
similar information from the data which were available. ^^ The 
percentages of failure are presented separately in each case for 
Latin, German, and French, not more than two years of which 
are required in the schools referred to above. A contrast is 
thus presented that is both interesting and suggestive. 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 45 
Percentages of Pupils Failing, by Years. (Johnson, F. W.) 

YEARS YEARS 

12 3 4 12 3 4 

English... 18.1 9.5 18.4 14.4 Latin 14.1 9.0 2.9 

Math 12.9 12.9 13.6 5.6 German... 12.4 7.4 

French. .. 14.3 9.6 3.1 

Percentages of Pupils Failing, by Semesters. (St. Paul) 

SEMESTERS 

12 3 4 5 6 7 8 

English and Math 17.8 18.0 16.3 16.9 8.1 14.0 .. .. 

Latin, German, French 17.6 17.5 15.1 7.6 3.0 



Apparently the full story has by no means been told when we 
simply say that there is a general decline in the percentages of 
failure by years or semesters. First, the failures of the drop- 
outs should be included, so far as it is at all feasible; second, 
the percentage should be based on the total enrollment in the 
subject, not on the final product, if we wish to disclose the real 
situation; third, the continuous or required subjects should be 
distinguished in order to give a full statement of the facts. On 
page 41 are presented the percentages of failure for the 1,125 
failing graduates alone, as found in this study, the greater por- 
tion of whose work, as it actually happened, consisted of 3- and 
4-year subjects continuous from the time of entrance, and for 
whom the percentages of failure increase to the ninth semester. 

7. Similarity of Facts for Boys and Girls 

Nowhere is there any definite indication that any of these 
factors of prognosis operates more distinctly or more pro- 
nouncedly on either boys or girls. Some variations do occur, 
but differences between the sexes in personal attitudes, social 
interests, or conventional standards may account for slight 
differences such as have been already noted. To simplify the 
statement of facts, no comparison of facts for boys and girls 
has, in general, been attempted where there was only similarity 
to be shown. 

A Summary of Chapter III 

The influence of non-attendance as a factor in school failure 
is partly provided for here, but no statistical data were secured. ' 



46 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

The percentage of physical and mental defects are doubtless 
comparatively small for high school pupils except in the case of 
vision. 

The facts regarding size of classes were unobtainable 

The pupils are distributed by their ages of entrance from 12 to 
20, with the mode of the distribution at 15. The younger en- 
tering pupils are distinctly more successful in escaping failure. 
They are also strikingly more successful in their ability to 
graduate. 

The older pupils who fail have a higher percentage of failure 
on the subjects taken. 

The first year's record has real prognostic value for pupils 
persisting more than three semesters. But 57 per cent of those 
leaving earlier have no failures. This includes nearly 60 per cent 
of all the non-failing pupils, but less than 32 per cent of the 
failing ones have gone that early. 

Prediction of failure by subjects is relatively easy and sure, 
and the later years seem more productive of this result. 

The percentage of failure on the total possibility of failure 
increases with the time period up to the seventh semester. The 
same facts are true for the graduates when considered alone. 
Fifty-six per cent of the failures for the graduates occur after the 
second year. The longer stay in school actually begets an in- 
crease of failures. The boys and girls are similarly affected by 
these factors of prognosis. 



References 

1. Keyes, C. H. Progress Through the Grades, pp. 23, 62. 

2. Terman, L. M. The Measurement of Intelligence, p. 68. 

3. Bronner, A. E. Psychology of Special Abilities and Disabilities. 

4. Ayres, L. P. " The Effect of Physical Defects on School Progress," 

Psychological Clinic, 3:71. 

5. Gulick, L. H., Ayres, L. P. Medical Inspection in the Schools, p. 194. 

6. Standards of The North Central Association of Colleges and Second- 

ary Schools. 

7. Hall-Quest, A. L., in Johnson's Modern High School, p. 270. 

8. King, I. The High School Age, p. 195. 

9. VanDenbiirg, J. K. The Elmiination of Pupils frotn Public Second- 

ary Schools, p. 113. 

10. Slattery, M. The Girl in Her Teens, p. 20. 

11. Wooley, H. T. " Facts About the Working Children of Cincinnati," 

Elementary ScJiool Teacher, 14:135. 



Prognosticating Occurrence of or Number of Failures 47 

12. Report of Commission on Industrial and Technical Education (Mass.), 

1906, p. 92. 

13. Barrows, Alice P. Report of Vocational Guidance Survey (New York 

City), Public Education Association, New York City, Bull. No. 9, 
1912. 

14. Holley, C. E. The Relationship Between Persistence in School and 

Home Conditions, Fifteenth Yearbook, Pt. II, p. 98. 

15. Bliss, D. C. " High School Failures," Educational Administration 

and Supervision, Vol. III. 

16. Annual Report of Board of Education, Pater son, 1915. 

17. Wood, J. W. " A Study of Failures," School and Society, I, 679. 

18. Johnson, F. W. " A Study of High School Grades," School Review^ 

19-13. 

19. Strayer, G. D., Coffman, L. D., Prosser, C. A. Report of a Survey 

of the School System of St. Paul, 1917. 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW MUCH IS THE GRADUATION OR THE PER- 
SISTENCE IN SCHOOL CONDITIONED BY THE 
OCCURRENCE OR THE NUMBER OF FAILURES? 

1. Comparison of the Failing and the Non-Failing Groups 
IN Reference to Graduation and Persistence 

It has been noted in section 1 of Chapter II that 58.1 per cent 
of all the graduates have school failures. Here we mean to 
carry the analysis and comparison in reference to graduation 
and failure somewhat further. To this end the following dis- 
tribution is significant. 

Distribution of. Pupils in Reference to Failure and Graduation 

The Non-failing Pupils — Graduating The Failing Pupils — Graduating 

Totals 2568 811(31.5%) 3573 1125(31.5%) 

Boys 1(X)1 307(30.6%) 1645 489(29.7%) 

Girls 1567 504(32.1%) 1928 639(33.0%) 

We have presented here the numbers that graduate without 
failures, together with the total group to which they belong, and 
the same for the graduates who have failed. By a mere process 
of subtraction we may determine the number of non-graduates, as 
well as the number of these that fail, and then compute the per- 
centage of the non-graduates who fail. Thus we get 58.2 per 
cent (boys — 62.5, girls — 54.9) as the percentage of the non- 
graduates failing. It is apparent at once that this is almost iden- 
tical with the percentage of failure for the ones who graduate 
(Chapter II), but for the non-graduates the boys and girls are a 
little further apart. It may be remarked in this connection that 
no effort was made to include any of the 808 non-credited pupils 
among the ones who fail. The inclusion of 60 per cent of this 
number as potentially failing pupils, as was done in Chapter II, 
will raise the above percentage of failing non-graduates by 11.5 
per cent. 

48 



Hoiv Much Is Graduation or Persistence Conditioned? 49 

The above distribution of pupils enables us to determine what 
percentage of the failing and of the non-failing groups gradu- 
ate. These percentages are identical — 31.5 per cent in each case. 
The boys and girls are further apart in the former group (boys — 
29.7, girls — 33) than in the latter group (boys — 30.6, girls — 
32.1). It follows, then, that the percentage who graduate of 
all the original entrants is 31.5 per cent. This fact varies by 
schools from 20.8 per cent to 45.4 per cent. And such percentage 
is in each case exclusive of the pupils who join the class by trans- 
fers from other schools or classes. Our particular interest is not 
in how many pupils the school graduates in any year, but rather 
in how many of the entering pupils in any one year stay to grad- 
uate. 

The greater persistence of the failing non-graduates, or the 
greater failing for the more persistent non-graduates, has already 
been given some attention in both Chapters II and III. In the 
following distribution the non-graduates alone are considered. 
The number persisting in school to each succeeding semester is 
first stated, and then the percentage of that number which is 
composed of the non-failing pupils is given. 

Distribution of the Non-graduates According to the Numbers Per- 
sisting TO Each Successive Semester 







BY END 


of semesters 








Total (4205) .... 
Per Cent of Non- 
failing (41.8).. 


1 2 

2787 1957 

24.5 20.0 


3 4 

1572 999 
16.4 13.9 


5 6 7 
761 390 234 

12.7 7.2 3.8 


8 
60 

1.6 


9 
23 




10 

4 



Only 20 per cent of the non-graduates who remain to the end 
of the first year (second semester) do not fail. Although the fail- 
ing non-graduates outnumber the non-failing ones when all the 
pupils who finally drop out are considered, their percentage 
of the majority increases rapidly for each successive semester 
continued in school. That the non-failing non-graduates are in 
general not the ones who persist long in school is shown by these 
percentages. 

2. The Number of Failures and the Years to Graduate 

The following table shows how the number of failures are re- 
lated to the time period required for graduation. The distribu- 



50 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

tion in Table VIII shows a range from 1 to 25 failures per 
pupil, and a time period for graduation ranging from 3 to 6 
years. It is evident from this distribution that the increase of 



TABLE VIII 

Distribution of Pupils Graduating, According to the Total Failures 

Each and the Time Taken to Graduate 



no. of 
failures 

Boys. 
Girls. 



10 
11-15 
16-20 
21-25 
Total 



Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 

Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 

Girls. 

Boys. 

Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 

Boys. 
Girls. 



YEARS TO GRADUATE 

3i 4 41 



51 



6 TOTALS 



20 23 
54 26 


244 
380 


12 
30 


8 
14 


• 


307 

504 


2 10 
5 8 


59 
83 


7 
13 


2 
5 


, 


80 
114 


2 2 
2 3 


64 
88 


7 
11 


7 
8 




1 


82 
113 


6 

1 1 


27 
53 


5 
6 


4 
3 




42 
64 


1 1 
4 6 


44 
57 



8 


8 • 

4 


1 

1 


55 
80 


1 

1 2 


41 
26 


2 

7 


3 
5 




47 
41 



1 


29 
29 


6 
3 


3 

8 




38 

1 42 


2 
1 


12 
13 


7 
4 


7 
5 




28 
23 



1 


17 
16 


7 
9 


8 

7 




1 33 
33 



1 


6 

7 


5 

8 


5 

8 




1 


16 

1 26 


1 
1 


6 

14 


4 
5 


6 
2 




1 


17 
23 



1 


9 
11 


18 
25 


11 
14 




1 


1 39 
4 56 




2 
■2 


2 
5 


4 
2 - 


1 

2 


1 10 
11 




1 





1 




4 


1 
3 


2 

1 9 


25 46 
67 52 


561 
780 


82 
135 


76 
89 


3 
10 


3 796 
7 1140 



How Much Is Graduation or Persistence Conditioned f 51 

time period for graduating is not commensurate with the num- 
ber of failures for the individual. By far the largest number 
graduate in four years in spite of their numerous failures. 
Nearly 70 per cent of the failing graduates require four years 
or less for graduation. The number who finish in three years 
is greater than the number who require either five and one-half 
or six years. The median number of failures per pupil is 4. The 
pupils with fewer than 4 failures who take more than four years 
to graduate are not representative of any particular school in this 
composite, nor are those having 10 or more failures who take 
less than 5 years to graduate. 

In reading Table VIII, we find that 20 boys and 54 girls who 
have no failures graduate in three years; 2 boys and 5 girls 
fail once and graduate in 3 years; 10 boys and 8 girls have 
one failure and graduate in 33/2 years, and so on. The median 
period is 4 years for those with no failures and it remains at 4 
for all who have fewer than 9 failures ; but the median time 
period is not above 5 years for the highest number of failures. 

3. The Number of Failures and the Semester of Dropping 
Out for the Non-graduates 

The pages preceding this point have given evidence that the 
failing pupils are not mainly the ones who drop out early. But 
we may still ask whether the number of failures per individual 
tends to determine how early he will be eliminated? This ques- 
tion calls for the facts of the next table. In this table the semes- 
ters of dropping out are indicated at the top. The failures range 
as high as 25 per pupil, and it is evident that not all pupils have 
left school until the eleventh semester. The distribution in- 
cludes the 1156 boys and the 1292 girls who failed and did not 
graduate ; also the 694 boys and the 1063 girls who dropped out 
without failing. The wide distribution of these non-graduates,^ 
both relative to the number of failures and to the time of drop- 
ping out, is forcibly brought to our attention by the table which 
follows. 



52 ScJiool Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

TABLE IX 

Distribution of the Non-Graduates, According to the Total Failures 
Each and the Time of Dropping Out 











SEMESTER OF DROPPING OUT 










NO. OF 




1 2 


3 


4 


5 


6 


7 


8 


9 


10 


11 


TOTAL 


FAILURES 
B. 

G. 


430 134 
643 163 


40 
89 


41 
78 


15 

27 


24 

45 


7 
12 


3 
5 




1 






694 

1063 
1 


1 


B. 
G. 


35 53 
46 65 


25 

25 


33 
34 


14 
12 


9 
12 


1 

4 


1 
3 








171 
201 


2 


B. 
G. 


52 58 
49 79 


18 
31 


30 
36 


8 

12 


17 
17 


5 
3 


6 
3 








194 
230 


3 


B. 
G. 


43 41 
54 52 


22 

19 


28 
34 


9 
18 


10 
17 


5 



1 
6 




1 






159 
201 


4 


B. 
G. 


27 31 
34 43 


13 
23 


32 
29 


7 
11 


11 
16 


9 
5 


2 
8 








132 
169 


5 


B. 
G. 




3 13 
2 14 


14 
18 


30 
24 


11 
5 


16 
13 


11 
3 


4 
5 








102 

84 


6 


B. 
G. 




. 27 
. 17 


8 

14 


24 
25 


11 
10 


16 
11 


11 
3 


6 
9 



2 




1 




103 
92 


7 


B. 
G. 




8 
9 


7 
3 


7 
15 


6 
8 


16 

7 


5 
5 


3 
5 






1 





53 
52 


8 


B. 
G. 




8 
. 10 


3 

5 


14 
15 


6 

7 


11 
10 


6 
6 


5 
6 


1 

1 




1 




54 
61 


9 


B. 
G. 




1 



1 
2 


7 
7 


5 
8 


8 
9 


2 
2 


7 
4 


3 

1 


1 






35 
33 


10 


B. 
G. 




2 
2 


2 

1 


10 
6 


2 
5 


7 
9 


6 

4 


10 

4 










39 
31 


11-15 


B. 
G. 






1 
1 


8 
5 


7 
12 


27 
22 


14 
20 


22 
23 


5 

9 


2 
6 




2 


86 
100 


16-20 


B. 
G. 








1 




2 


8 
3 


3 
3 


6 

12 


3 
6 


3 
2 



2 


24 
30 


21-25 


B. 
G. 














'i 


2 
3 


1 
3 


1 
1 




4 
8 


TOTAL 


B. 
G. 


5S 
8^ 


376 

28 454 


154 
231 


265 
308 


101 
137 


180 
191 


85 
71 


78 
96 


13 

24 


8 
11 




4 


1850 
2355 



1757 



372 



424 



360 



301 



186 



195 



105 



115 



68 



70 



186 



54 



12 



4205 



Table IX reads in a manner similar to Table VIII : 430 boys 
and 643 girls, having failures, drop out in the first semester; 
35 boys and 46 girls drop out in the first semester with a single 



How Mitch Is Graduation or Persistence Conditioned? 53 

failure ; 3 boys and 2 girls drop out in the first semester with five 
failures each. 

For a small portion of these drop-outs the number of failures 
is undoubtedly the prime or immediate factor in securing their 
eliminatian. It seems probable that such is the situation for 
most of those pupils who drop out after 50 per cent or more of 
their school work has resulted in failures. Yet a few of these 
pupils manage to continue for an extended time in school, as the 
following distribution shows. 

Drop-Outs Failing in 50 Per Cent or More of Their Total Work, and 
Their Distribution by Semesters of Dropping Out 

semesters 



1 


2 


3 


4 


5 


6 


7 


221 B 81 


69 


17 


24 


7 


15 


4 


254 G 98 


68 


20 


35 


14 


10 


5 


%of Total 36.9 


28.2 


7.6 


12.2 


4.3 


5.2 


1.9 



9 


10 


1 


1 


5 


1 


2 


.4 



2.0 1 

This grouping includes 485 pupils, or 11.5 per cent of the 
total number of 4,205 drop-outs. But whatever the part may be 
that is played by failing it is evident that it does not operate 
to cause their early loss to the school in nearly all of these 
instances. It may be noted here that it is difficult to find any 
justification for allowing or forcing these pupils to endure two, 
three, or four years of a kind of training for which they have 
shown themselves obviously unfitted. To be sure, they have 
satisfied a part of these failures by repetitions or otherwise, 
but only to go on adding more failures. A device of ' super- 
annuation ' is employed in certain schools by which a pupil who 
has failed in half of his work for two semesters, and is sixteen 
years of age, is supposed to be dropped automatically from the 
school. This device seems designed to evade a difficulty in the ab- 
sence of any real solution for it, and harmonizes with the school 
aims that are prescribed in terms of subject matter rather than 
in terms of the pupils' needs. From the standpoint of the indi- 
vidual pupil his peculiar qualities are not likely to be fashioned 
to the highest degree of usefulness by this procedure. It simply 
serves notice that the pupil must make the adjustment needed, 
as the school cannot or will not. 

Notwithstanding the testimony furnished by the accumula- 
tion of failures shown in Table IX, there are grounds for' be- 



54 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

lieving that for the major portion of all the non-graduates the 
number of failures is not a prime nor perhaps a highly important 
cause of their dropping out of school. This conviction seems 
to be substantiated by the statement of percentages below. 

The Percentage of Non-Graduates Who Drop Out With 






1 or 


2 or fewer 


3 or fewer 


4 or fewer 


5 or fewer 


Failure 


Failure 


Failures 


Failures 


Failures 


Failures 


41.8 


50.6 


60.7 


69.2 


76.4 


80.8 



The fact that nearly 81 per cent of the non-graduates have 
only 5 failures or less, taken in comparison with the fact that ap- 
proximately one fourth of the failing graduates have 8 or more 
failures, argues that the number of failures alone can hardly be 
considered one of the larger factors in causing the dropping out. 
In a report concerning the working children of Cincinnati, H. T. 
Wooley remarks^ that "two-thirds of our children leaving the pub- 
lic schools are the failures." This seems to suppose failing a 
large cause of the dropping out. But this investigation of fail- 
ure indicates that the percentage of failure for those leaving is 
no higher than for the ones who do not leave. A similar illus- 
tration is credited to O. W. Caldwell", who makes reference to 
the large percentage of the failing pupils who leave high school, 
without taking any recognition of the equally large percentage 
of the failing pupils who continue in the high school. 

There is in no sense any intention here to condone the large 
number of failures simply because it is pointed out that they do 
not operate chiefly to cause elimination from school. The above 
facts may lead to some such conviction as that expressed by 
Wooley,^ after giving especial attention to those who had left 
school, that "the real force that is sending a majority of these 
children out into the industrial field is their own desire to go to 
work, and behind this desire is frequently the dissatisfaction with 
school." A somewhat similar conviction seems to be shared by 
King,^ in saying that "the pupil who yields unwillingly to the 
narrow round of school tasks . . . will grasp at almost any 
pretext to quit school." W. F. Book tabulated the reasons why 
pupils leave high school,* as given by 1,051 pupils. He found 
that discouragement, loss of interest, and disappointment affect 
more pupils than all the other causes combined. Likewise 



How Much Is Graduation or Persistence Conditioned f 55 

Bronner notes^ that the ' irrational ' sameness of school proced- 
ure for all pupils often leads to "serious loss of interest in school 
work, discouragement, truancy, and disciplinary problems." 
Still it may be that the worst consequences of multiplied failures 
are not to those dropping out. W. D. Lewis observes** that the 
failing pupil "speedily comes to accept himself as a failure," and 
that "the disaster to many who stay in the schools is greater than 
to those v/ho are shoved out." To the same point Hanus tells^ 
us that "during the school period aversion and evasion are more 
frequently cultivated than power and skill, through the forced 
pursuit of uninteresting subjects." A pupil who acquires the 
habit of failing and the attitude of accepting it as a necessary 
evil may soon give up trying to win and become satisfied to ac- 
cept himself as less gifted, or even to accept life in general as 
necessarily a matter of repeated failures. In a similar connec- 
tion, James E. Russell says,^ "the boy who becomes accustomed 
to second place soon fails to think at his best." Such psycho- 
logical results in regard to habits and attitude accruing from 
repeated failures are both certain and insidious. And an edu- 
cation which purports to be for all and to offer the highest 
training to each must abandon the inculcation of attitudes of 
mind so detrimental to the individual and to the very society 
which educates him. 

4. The Percentages That the Non-Graduate Groups Form 

OF the Pupils Who Have Each Successively Higher 

Number of Failures 

By merely adding the columns of totals for Tables VHI and 

IX, we are able to obtain the full number of pupils who have 

each number of failures from 1 to 25. We may readily secure 

the percentages for the non-graduates in each of these groups 

by referring again to the numbers in the totals column of Table 

IX. The following series of percentages are thus obtained. 

The Percentage Formed by Non-Graduates With 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., Failures 
On the Total Number Who Have 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., Failures 

No. of Failures. 012345678 

Percent 68.4 65.7 68.5 77.2 69.0 68.0 70.6 67.3 63.5 

No. of Failures. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 + 

Percent 61.8 63.6 69.0 61.2 66.0 65.3 70.0 61.5 69.4 



56 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

That these percentages would be higher for the non-gradu- 
ates than for the graduates (that is, above 50 per cent) would 
certainly be expected by a glance at their higher numbers in 
every group of their distribution. But it would hardly be expected 
by most of us that the percentages would show no general tend- 
ency to rise as the failures per pupil increase in number, yet 
such is the truth as found here. The reverse of these facts was 
found by Aaron I. Dotey, with a smaller group of high school 
pupils^ (1,397), studied in one of the New York City high 
schools. Still he also asserts that failure in studies is not a cause 
of elimination to the extent that it is generally supposed to be. 
We may gain some advantage for judging the general tendency 
of the extended and varied series of percentages above, by com- 
puting them in groups of larger size, thus yielding a briefer 
series, as follows : 

(A Condensed Form of the Preceding Statement) 

No. of Failures. . . 1 to 4 5 to 8 9 to 12 13 to 16 17 to 25 

Percent 68.4 67.6 67.3 63.9 65.7 69.4 

Not only do the percentages of non-graduates not increase 
relatively as the numbers of failure go higher, but there is a 
slight general decline in these percentages until we reach '17 or 
more' failures per pupil. Then for '17 to 25' failures per pupil 
there is an increase of only 1 per cent over that for failures. 
The number of failures does not seem directly to condition the 
pupil's ability to graduate or to continue to in school. 

5. Ti:\iE Extension for the Failing Graduates 

We shall now inquire further what extension of time for 
graduating characterizes the failing graduates in comparison 
with the non-failing ones. 

The distribution according to the period for graduation for 
the 1,936 pupils who graduate was shown by the summary lines 
of Table VIII. In the same table the non-failing graduates are 
included (but distinct). No pupil graduates in less than three 
years and none takes longer than six years; 9.8 per cent of the 
number finish in less than 4 years ; 19.7 per cent take more than 
4 years. The small number that finish earlier than four years 



Hoiv Much Is Graduation or Persistence Conditioned? 57 

may be due in part to the single annual graduation in several of 
the schools. Some of the schools admitting two classes each 
year graduated only one, and the records made it plain that some 
pupils had a half year more credit than was needed for graduat- 
ing. Considering, however, that about 42 per cent of the gradu- 
ates had no failures, they should have been able to speed up 
more on the time period of getting through. They were doubt- 
less not unable to do that. But some principals hold the convic- 
tion that four years will result in a rounding out of the pupil 
more than commensurate with the extended time. More than 
35 per cent of those who did finish in less than four years are 
graduates who had failed from 1 to 11 times. In the conven- 
tional period of four years 77 per cent of the non-failing and 
64 per cent of the failing graduates complete their work and 
graduate (see p. 59, for the means employed). The percentages 
of non-failing graduates for each time period are given below. 

The Percentages of Non-Failing Graduates for Each Period 

Time Period in Years 3 \ 4 h 5^6 

Per Cent of Non-Failing.. 80.4 50.0 46.5 19.3 13.3 

This continuous decline of percentages representing the non- 
failing graduates shows that they have an evident advantage in 
regard to the time period for graduating. Their percentages are 
high for the shorter time periods and low for the longer periods. 
But by reference to Table VIII we quickly find that the slight 
extension of the time period for the failing graduates is not at all 
commensurate with the number of failures which they have. 
The failures are provided for in various ways, as Chapter V 
will explain. No striking differences are observed for the boys 
and girls in any division of this chapter. 

A Summary of Chapter IV 

The percentages of graduates and of non-graduates that fail 
are almost identical. 

The percentages of the failing pupils who graduate and of the 
non-failing pupils who graduate are identical (31.5 per cent) ; 
hence, graduation is not perceptibly conditioned by the occur- 
rence of failure. 



58 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Siibjects 

The non-failing non-graduates do not persist long in school, as 
compared with the failing non-graduates. The short persistence 
partly accounts for their avoidance of failure. 

As the number of failures per pupil increase for the failing 
graduates, the time extension is not commensurate with the 
number of failures. 

For 11.5 per cent of the non-graduates who fail in 50 per cent 
or more of their work, failure is probably a chief cause of drop- 
ping out. 

Failure is probably not a prime cause of dropping out for 
most of the non-graduates, as 80 per cent have only 5 failures 
or fewer. 

The worst consequences of failure are perhaps in acquiring the 
habit of failing, and in coming to accept one's self as a failure. 
The number of drop-outs does not tend to increase as the num- 
ber of failures per pupil increases. 

The time period for graduating ranges from three to six years, 
with approximately 79 per cent of all graduates finishing in four 
years or less. The failing graduates take, on the average, a lit- 
tle longer time than the non- failing, but not an increase that is 
proportionate to the number of failures. 

The boys and girls present no striking differences in the facts 
of Chapter IV. 

References : 

1. Wooley, H. T. "Facts About the Working_ Children of Cincinnati," 

Elemetiiary School Teacher, Vol. XIV, 13b. 

2. Caldwell, O. W. " Laboratory Method and High School Efficiency," 

Popular Science Monthly, 82-243. 

3. King, Irving. The High School Age. 

4. Book, W. F. " Why Pupils Fail," Pedagogical Seminary, 11:204. 

5. Bronner, A. E. The Psychology oj Special Abilities and Disabilities, 

p. 6. 

6. Lewis, W. D. Democracy's High School, pp. 28, 37. 

7. Hanus, P. H. School Aims ajid Values. 

8. Russell, J. E. " Co-education in High School. Is It a Failure? " Reprint 

from Good Housekeeping. 

9. Dotey, A. I. An Investigation of Scholarship Records of High School 

Pupils. High School Teachers Association of New York City. Bul- 
letins 1911-14, p. 220. 



CHAPTER V 

ARE THE SCHOOL AGENCIES EMPLOYED IN REM- 
EDYING FAILURES ADEQUATE FOR THE 
PURPOSE? 

The caption of this chapter suggests the inquiry as to what 
are the agencies employed by the school for this purpose, and 
how extensively does each function? The different means em- 
ployed and the number attempting in the various ways to satisfy 
for the failures charged are classified and stated below, but the 
success of each method is considered later in its turn. One 
might think also of time extension, night school, summer school, 
correspondence courses, and tutoring as possible factors deserv- 
ing to be included here in the list of remedies for failures made. 
The matter of time extension has already been partly treated in 
Chapter IV, while the facts for the other agencies mentioned are 
rather uncertain and difficult to trace on the records. However, 
they all tend to eventuate finally in one of the methods noted be- 
low. 

The Disposition Made of the School Failures 

rr. , T, Both 

Total Repeat Contin. No Repeat 

No. the School Exam. Regents' Discon. or Repet. and 

Failures Subject Final or Spec. Exam's. Substitution or Exam. Exam. 

8348 B.. 3695 821 1333 2471 259 231 

9612 G.. 5001 1025 1752 1929 249 344 

Per Cent 

ofTotal 48.4 10.3 17.2 24.5 2.8 3.2 

It is obvious from these percentages that school practice puts 
an inclusive faith in the repetition of the subject, as 48.4 per cent 
of all the failures are referred to this one remedy for the pur- 
pose of being rectified, although one school made practically no 
use of this means (see section 5 of this chapter). We shall pro- 
ceed to find how effectively it operates and how much this faith 
is warranted by the results. The cases above designated as 

59 



60 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

both repeating and taking examination (3.2 per cent) have been 
counted twice, and their percentage must be subtracted from the 
sum of the percentages in order to give 100 per cent. 

1. Repetition as a Remedy for Failures 

We already know how many of the failing pupils repeat the 
subject of failure, but the success attending such repetition is en- 
titled to further attention. Accordingly, the grades received in 
the 8,696 repetitions are presented here. 

Grades Secured in the Subjects Repeated 

GRADES 

Total Repetitions A B C D Inc. 

3695 Boys 63 547 1853 1003 219 

5001 Girls 83 724 2510 1337 347 

Per Cent of Total 1.7 14.7 50.3 33.3 

Less than 2 per cent of the repeaters secure A's, while only 
about 1 in 6 ever secures either an A or a B. The first three are 
passing grades, with values as explained in Chapter I, and D 
represents failure. Of the repeated subjects 33.3 per cent re- 
sult in either a D or an unfinished status. It is a fair assumption 
that the unfinished grade usually bore pretty certain prospects 
of being a failing grade if completed, and it is so treated here. 
There is a difference of less than 1 per cent in the failures as- 
signed to boys and girls for the repeated subjects. 

The hope was entertained in the original plan of this study to 
secure several other sorts of information about the repeaters, but 
these later proved to be unobtainable. The influence of repeat- 
ing with the same teacher as contrasted with a change of teach- 
ers in the same subject, the comparative facts for the repetition 
with men or with women teachers, the varying results for the 
different sizes of classes, and the apparent effect of supervised 
study of some sort before or after failing, were all sought for in 
the records available; but the schools were not able to provide 
any definite and complete information of the sorts here specified. 

a. Size of Schedule and Results of Repeating 

It would seem plausible that the failing pupils who were per- 
mitted and who possessed the energy would want to take one or 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 61 

more extra subjects to balance the previous loss of credit due to 
failure. Then it becomes important at once for the administra- 
tive head to know whether the proportion of failures bears a defi- 
nite relationship to the size of the pupil's schedule of subjects. A 
normal schedule for most purposes and for most of the schools 
includes, on the average, four subjects or twenty weekly hours, 
In this study the schedule which each individual school claimed 
as normal schedule, has been accepted as such, all larger sched- 
ules being considered extra size and all smaller ones reduced. 
For instance, in one of the schools five subjects are considered a 
normal schedule even though they totaled 24 points, which is not 
usual.' But in the other schools a normal schedule includes the 
range from 18 to 22 points irrespective of those carried in the 
subjects outside of the classification included in this study; while 
above 22 points is an extra schedule and below 18 a reduced 
schedule in the same sense as above. For the most part this 
meant that five or more of such subjects form an extra schedule, 
and that three form a reduced schedule. In this manner all the 
repeated subjects are classed as part of a reduced, a normal, or 
an extra sized schedule as follows. 

Size of Schedules for Pupils Taking Repeated Subjects 

Total Reduced Normal Extra 

3695 Boys 132 1762 180l 

5001 Girls 164 2684 2153 

Per Cent of Total 3.4 51.1 45.5 

This distribution indicates that relatively few of the pupils take 
a reduced schedule in repeating. For the succeeding comparison 
with the grades of extra schedule pupils, those having a normal 
or reduced schedule are grouped together. 

Grades for Subjects Repeated by Failing Pupils Who Carried 
A Reduced or Normal Schedule 

Total Repetitions A B C D 

1894 Boys 34 259 894 541 166 

2848 Girls 44 361 1319 840 284 

Per Cent of Total 1.6 13.1 46.7 38.6 

In this distribution are the grades for 4742 instances of repeti- 
tion. Of these, 38.6 per cent fail to pass after repeating. It is 



62 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

not possible to say definitely how many of these pupils actually 
determine their schedule by a free choice, and how many are re- 
stricted by school authorities or by home influence. But certain 
it is that a policy of opposition exists in some schools and with 
some teachers tp allowing repeaters to carry more than a pre- 
scribed schedule ; and in most schools at least some form of dis- 
crimination or regulation is exercised in this matter. It will ap- 
pear from the next distribution that a rule of uniformity in re- 
gard to size of schedule, without regard to the individual pupils, 
is here, as elsewhere, lacking in wisdom and is in disregard of the 
facts. 

Grades for the Subjects Repeated, with an Extra Schedule 

Total Repetitions A B C D 

1801 Boys 29 288 969 462 53 

2153 Girls 39 363 1191 497 63 



Per Cent of Total 1.7 16.6 54.5 27.2 

Out of the 3,954 repeated subjects in this distribution, 72.8 
per cent secure passing grades, 27.2 per cent result in failures. 
This means that the repeaters with an extra schedule have 11.4 
per cent fewer failing grades than the repeaters who carry only 
a normal or a reduced schedule. They also excel in the per- 
centage of A's and B's secured for repeated subjects. In only 
one of the eight schools was the reverse of these general facts 
found to be true. In one other school the difference was more 
than 2 to 1 in favor of the extra schedule repeaters as judged by 
the percentages of failure for each group. It seems that at least 
three factors operate to secure superior results for repeaters with 
heavier schedule. First, they are undoubtedly a more highly se- 
lected group in reference to ability and energy. Second, they have 
the advantage of the spur and the motivation which comes from 
the consciousness of a heavier responsibility, and from which ema- 
nates greater earnestness of effort. Third, it is probable that 
some teachers are more helpful and considerate in the aiding and 
grading of pupils who appear to be working hard. It is, at any 
rate, a plain fact that those who are willing and who are per- 
mitted to take extra work are the more successful. Excessive 
emphasis must not be placed on the latter requirement alone, as 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 63 

willingness frequently seems to be the only essential condition 
imposed. 

h. Later Grades in the Same Kind of Subjects, Following Repe- 
tition and Without It 
Next in importance to the degree of success attending the 
repetition of failing subjects is the efifect which such repetition 
has upon the results in later subjects of the same kind. By 
tabulating separately the later grades in like subjects for those 
who had repeated and for those who had not repeated after 
failure, we have the basis for the following comparison of results. 
It should be stated at this point that by the same kind of sub- 
ject is not meant a promiscuous grouping together of all language 
or of all history courses. But for languages a later course in 
the same language is implied, with the single exception that Latin 
and French are treated as though French were a mere continua- 
tion of the Latin preceding it. Certain other decisions are as 
arbitrary. Greek, Roman, and ancient history are considered as 
in the same class ; so are modern, English, and American history. 
The general and the biological sciences are grouped together, 
but the physical sciences are distinguished as a separate group. 
The various commercial subjects are considered to be of the 
same kind only when they are the same subject. All mathe- 
matics subjects are regarded as the same kind of subjects except 
commercial arithmetic which is classed as a commercial subject. 
All the later marks given in what was regarded as the same kind 
of subject, are included in the two distributions of grades which 
follow. 

Later Grades in the Same Kind of Subject, After Failure and Repe- 
tition OF THE Subject 

Total A B C D 

2788 Boys 28 308 1441 1011 

3489 Girls 33 307 1748 1401 

Per Cent of Total 9 9.8 50.8 38,4 

This distribution shows a marked tendency for failures in any 
subject to be accompanied by further failures (38.4 per cent), 
not only in the subjects for which it is a prerequisite but in sub- 
jects closely akin to it. If this tendency to succeeding failures 



64 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

is really dependent upon thoroughness in the preceding subject, 
then the repetition of the subject should offer an opportunity 
for greater thoroughness and should prove to be a distinct ad- 
vantage in this regard. When we compare the percentage of 
failures above with that in the following distribution, we fail to 
find evidence of such an advantage in repetition. The continuity 
of failures by subjects and the ineffectiveness of repetition are 
pointed out by T. H. Briggs^ as found in an unpublished study by 
J. H. Riley, showing that after repeating and passing the subjects 
of failure, 33 per cent of those who continued the subject failed 
again the next semester. 

ATER Grades in the Same Kind of Subjects, F ollowing Failure but 
With No Repetition 

Total A B C D 

1269 Boys 5 102 639 523 

1191 Girls 8 147 669 367 

Per Cent of Total 5 10.1 53.1 36.2 

Here the same pronounced tendency is disclosed for the occur- 
rence of other subsequent failures in the subjects closely similar. 
But for this distribution of grades, secured without any preced- 
ing repetitions, the unsuccessful result is 2.2 per cent lower than 
that found for those who had repeated. This group is not so large 
in numbers as the one above, and undoubtedly there is some dis- 
tinct element of pupil selection involved, for it is not easy to 
believe that the repetition should work a positive injury to the 
later grades. Nevertheless, our faith in the worth of uncon- 
ditional repetitions should properly be disturbed by such dis- 
closures. 

c. The Grades in Repeated Subjects and in the New Work, for 
the Same Semester and the Same Pupils 
If it is granted that the teachers of the repeaters are equally 
g6od as compared with the others, then the previous familiarity 
with the work that is being repeated might be expected to serve 
as an advantage in its favor when compared with the new and 
advanced work in other subjects. But the grades for the new 
and advanced work as presented below, and the grades for the 
repeated subjects as presented earlier in this chapter (section 1), 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 65 

deny the validity of such an assumption and give us a different 
version of the facts. 

The Grades Secured in New Work, at Same Time and by Same Pupils 
AS the Grades Secured in the Repeated Subjects 

Total " A B C D 

11,029 Boys 256 2225 5543 3005 

11,941 Girls 198 2064 6604 3075 

Per Cent of Total 1.9 18.6 53.1 26.4 

The facts not only show a lower percentage (by 6.9 per cent) 
of unsuccessful grades in the new work, but they also show a 
higher percentage of A's, of B's, and of C's than for the repeated 
subjects. There is definite suggestion here that often the par- 
ticular subject of failure may be more responsible and more at 
fault than the particular pupil. Certainly uniformity and an 
arbitrary routine of tasks ignore the individual differences of 
interests and abilities. But by their greater and their repeated 
failures in the same deficient subjects (see p. 66) these pupils 
seem to have reasserted stoutly the facts ignored. They have 
been asked to repeat and repeat again subjects which they have 
already indicated their unfitness to handle successfully. This 
pursuance of an unsuccessful method is not good procedure in 
the business world. The doctor does not employ such methods. 

d. The Number and Results of Identical Repetitions 

It has become apparent before this that some pupils fail sev- 
eral times and in identical subjects because of their unsuccessful 
repetitions after each failure. Final success might at times jus- 
tify multiplied repetitions, but in such instances it becomes in- 
creasingly important that the repetition should eventually end in 
success after the subject has been repeated two, three or 
four times. If such is not the result, then the method is at best 
a misdirection of energy ; or still worse it is an irreparable error, 
expensive to the individual and the school alike, which only 
serves to accentuate the inequalities and perversions of oppor- 
tunity imposed by an arbitrary requirement of the same subjects, 
the same methods, and the same scheme of education for all 
pupils alike, regardless of their capacities and interests. In 
using the term identical it is intended to designate just one unit 



66 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

of the course, as English I, or Latin II. The following table 
will disclose the facts as to the success resulting from each num- 
ber of such successive and identical repetitions per pupil. 



TABLE X 



NO. OF 
REPET. 



1 Boys . 
Girls. 

2 Boys. 
Girls. 

3 Boys. 
Girls. 

4 Boys. 
Girls. 

5 Boys. 
Girls. 

6 Boys. 
Girls. 

Tot. Boys. 
Girls. 



62 
80 

1 
3 



63 
83 



,TS OF Repeated Repetitions, 
Subjects 


FOR Identical 




Grades 








B 

532 

702 


C 

1727 
2329 


D 

880 
1180 


No 

Grade 

216 

342 


Totals Per Cent 
Failing 
3417 
4633 32.5 


15 
17 


106 

154 


77 
89 


3 

2 


202 

265 36.6 



5 


26 
19 


33 
36 



3 


59 

63 59.0 




4 
8 


11 
25 

2 
5 


o 




15 

33 75.0 

2 

5 100.0 



2 100.0 


547 
724 


1863 
2510 


1003 
1337 


219 

347 


3695 
5001 



Although a smaller number of pupils make each higher num- 
ber of repetitions, a higher percentage of each successive group 
meets with final failure in the subject repeated, and the facts are 
indicative of what should be expected however large the num- 
bers making such multiplied repetitions. It seems almost in- 
credible that pupils should anywhere be required or permitted to 
make the fourth, fifth, or sixth repetition of subjects so mani- 
festly certain of leading to further disappointment. It must be 
understood, too, that five and six repetitions means six and seven 
times over the same school work. The existence of such a 
situation testifies to a sort of deep-seated faith in the dependence 
of the pupil's educational salvation on the successful repetiton 
of some particular school subject. It shows no recognition that 
the duty of the school is to give each pupil the type of training 
best suited to his individual endowments and limitations, and at 
the same time in keeping with the needs of society. Such indis- 
criminate repetition becomes a matter of thoughtless duplicating 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 67 

and operates, first, to increase the economic, educational, and 
human waste, where the school is especially the agency charged 
with conserving the greatest of our national resources. Second, 
it operates to fix more permanently the habit and attitude of 
failing for such pupils, and bequeaths to society the fruit of such 
maladjustments, which cannot fail to function frequently and 
seriously in the production of industrial dissatisfactions and mis- 
fits later in life. Such probabilities are merely in keeping with 
the psychological fact that habits once established are not likely 
to be easily lost. Indiscriminate repetition is an expensive way 
of failing to do the thing which it assumes to do. 

Surely one finds in the preceding pages rather slight grounds 
to warrant the almost unqualified faith in repetition such as the 
school practice exhibits (Table X), or in the importance of the 
particular subjects so repeated. There may be evidence in this 
faith and practice of what Snedden^ calls the " undue importance 
attached to the historic instruments of secondary education . . . 
now taught mainly because of the ease with which they can be 
presented . . . and which may have had little distinguishable 
bearing on the future achievement of those young people so 
gifted by nature as to render it probable that they should later 
become leaders." But such instruments will not lack direct 
bearing on the productions of failures for pupils whose interests 
and needs are but remotely served by such subjects. 

A recent ruling in the department of secondary education,^ in 
New York City, denies high school pupils permission " to repeat 
the same grade and type of work for the third consecutive time " 
after failing a second time. And further it is prescribed that 
" students who have failed twice in any given grade of a foreign 
language should be dropped from all classes in that language," 
Our findings in this study will seem to verify the wisdom of 
these rulings. Another ruHng that " students who have failed 
to complete successfully four prepared subjects should not be 
permitted to elect more than four in the succeeding term," or if 
they "have passed four subjects and failed in one," should be 
permitted to take five only provisionally, seems to judge the in- 
dividual's capacities pretty much in terms of failure. We have 
found that for approximately 4,000 repetitions with an extra 
schedule, however or by whomever they may have been deter- 



68 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

mined, the percentage getting A's and B's was higher and the 
percentage of faihng was substantially lower than for approxi- 
mately 4,700 repetitions with only three or four subjects for 
each schedule. It does not appear that the number of subjects 
is uniformly the factor of prime importance, or that such a 
ruling will meet the essential difficulty regarding failure. The 
failure in any subject will more often tend to indicate a specific 
difficulty rather than any general lack of ' ability plus applica- 
tion ' relative to the number of subjects. The maladjustment is 
not so often in the size of the load as in the kind or composition 
of the load for the particular individual concerned. The burden 
is sometimes mastered by repeated trials. But often the par- 
ticular adjustment needed is clearly indicated by the antecedent 
failures. 



2. Discontinuance of Subject or Course, and the 
Substitution of Others 

Earlier in this chapter appears the number and percentage of 
failures whose disposition was effected by discontinuance or by 
substitution. Twenty-four and five-tenths per cent of the fail- 
ures were accounted for in this way. This grouping happens to 
be a rather complex one. IMany of such pupils simply discon- 
tinue the course and then drop out of school. Some discontinue 
the subject but because they have extra credits take no substitute 
for it; others substitute in a general way to secure the needed 
credits but not specifically for the subject dropped. Only a few 
shift their credits to another curriculum. In some instances the 
subject is itself an extra one, and needs no substitute. For the 
graduating pupils only about 5 per cent of the failures are dis- 
posed of by discontinuing and by substitution of subjects. This 
fact may be due to the greater economy in examinations, or to 
the relatively inflexible school requirements for completing the 
prescribed work by repetition whether for graduation or for 
college entrance. In only one school was there a tendency to 
discontinue the subject failed in. So far as failures represent a 
definite maladjustment between the pupil and the school subject, 
the substitution of other work would seem to be the m^ost rational 
solution of the difficulty. 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 69 

A consideration of the success following a substitution of vo- 
cational or shop subjects, to replace the academic subjects of 
failure, offers an especially promising themiC for study. No 
opportunity was offered in the scope of this study to include 
that sort of inquiry, but its possibilities are recognized and ac- 
knowledged herein as worthy of earnest attention. In only two 
of the eight schools was any shop-work offered, and only one of 
these could probably claim vocational rank. Apart from the 
difficulty in reference to comparability of standards, there were 
not more than a negligible number of cases of such substitution, 
due partly to the relative recency in the offering of any vocational 
work. In this reference a report comes from W. D. Lewis of 
an actual experiment* in which " fifty boys of the school loafer 
type . . . selected because of their prolific record in failure — 
as they had proved absolute failures in the traditional course — 
were placed in charge of a good red-blooded man in a thoroughly 
equipped wood work shop." " The shop failed to reach just 
one." At the same time the academic work improved. One 
cannot be sure of how much to credit the type of work and how 
much the red-blooded man for such results. But we may feel 
sure of further contributions of this sort in due time. 

3. Employment of School Examinations 

The school examinations employed to dispose of the failures 
are of two types. The ' final ' semester examination, employed 
by certain schools and required of pupils who have failed, oper- 
ates to remove the previous failure for that semester of the 
subject. The success of this plan is not high, because of the 
insufficient time available to make any adequate reparation for 
the failures already charged. Of the 1,657 examinations of this 
kind to satisfy for failures, 30.7 per cent result in success. The 
boys are more successful than the girls by 4.5 per cent. This 
particular procedure is not employed by more than two of the 
eight schools. The other form of school examination employed 
for disposing of failures is the special examination, usually fol- 
lowing some definite preparation, and given at the discretion of 
the teacher or department head. Its employment seems also to 
be limited pretty much to two of the schools, because for most 



70 School Records of Pupils Failing in Higli School Subjects 

of the subjects the Regents' examinations tend to displace it in 
the schools of the New York State and City systems. As only 
the successes were sure of being recorded in these tests we do 
not know the percentage of success attributable to this plan of 
removing failures. It probably deserves to be credited with a 
fairly high degree of success, for relatively few pupils (less than 
200) utilize it, and then frequently after some extra preparation 
or study — such as summer school courses or tutoring. These 
two forms of school examinations jointly yield 37.5 per cent of 
successes on the number attempted, so far as such are recorded. 

4. The Service Rendered by the Regents' Examinations in 
New York State 

Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the Regents' ex- 
amination system in general for academic school subjects, these 
tests certainly perform a saving function for the failing pupils, 
by promptly rectifying so many of their school failures and thus 
rescuing them from the burden of expensive repetition. A pupil's 
success in the Regents' examination has the immediate effect of 
satisfying the school failure charged to him. At the same time, 
it is possible, as is sometimes asserted, that the anticipation of 
these tests inclines some teachers to a more gratuitous distribution 
of failing marks as a spur to their pupils to brace up and perform 
well in reference to the Regents' questions. However, there is 
no trace of that policy found so far as the schools included in 
this study are concerned. For the three New Jersey schools 
considered jointly have a higher percentage of failing pupils, and 
a slightly higher average in the number of failures for each fail- 
ing pupil than have the three New York State schools. 

But it is more probable that the attitude referred to operates 
to exclude the failing pupils from being freely permitted to enter 
the Regents' tests in the failing subjects, and thus to restrain 
them from what threatens to lower the school percentage of suc- 
cessful papers, except that in New York City .such discrimina- 
tion is prohibited.^ On the percentages of success for these ex- 
amination results teachers and even schools are wont to be popu- 
larly judged. Annual school reports may feature the passing 
percentage for the school in Regents' examinations, with a spirit 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 71 

of pride or rivalry, but with no word of what that percentage 
costs as real cost must be reckoned. It is interesting to note in 
this connection that the percentage of unsuccessful repetitions 
for the three New Jersey schools is 13.7 per cent lower than for 
the three New York schools. In addition to this, for the latter 
schools 22 per cent more of the subject failures are repeated than 
for the former ones mentioned. It is important also to bear in 
mind that the success percentage for the Regents' tests is com- 
puted on the number admitted to the examinations — not on the 
number instructed in the subject. The regulations are flexible 
and admit of considerable latitude in matters of classification and 
interpretation. Accordingly, if it happens anywhere in the state 
that those who are the less promising candidates, in the teacher's 
judgment, are debarred from attempting Regents' examinations 
by failing marks, by demotion and exclusion from their class, or 
by other means, the school's percentage of pupils passing may 
be kept high as a result, but the injustice worked upon the pupil 
in such manner is vicious and reprehensible. Yet the whole in- 
tolerableness of the practice will center in the rule for exclusion 
of pupils from these examinations because of school failure. 
No one can predict with any safe degree of certainty that the 
outcome of any individual's efforts will be a failure in the Re- 
gents' tests, even though he has failed in a school subject. If 
failure should happen to result, it is chiefly the school pride that 
suffers ; if the pupil is denied a free trial, he may suffer an injus- 
tice to aid the pretension of the school. Our school sanctions are 
not characterized by such acumen or infallibility as to warrant 
our refusing to give a pupil the benefit of the doubt. He is entitled 
to his chance to win success in these examinations if he is able, 
and it appears that only results in the Regents' tests can be truly 
trusted to tell us that he is or is not able to pass them. 

The facts depicted here may lead to the belief that the re- 
corded success in Regents' examinations may sometimes be arti- 
ficially high, due to the subtle influences at work to make it so. 
In New York City absence is the sole condition for debarring 
any pupil, since he must have pursued a subject the prescribed 
time. Such a ruling is highly commendable, and it should not 
in fairness to the pupil be otherwise anywhere in the state. The 
following distribution discloses that 72.8 per cent of the 3^085 



72 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

failing pupils who were recorded as taking the Regents' exami- 
nations were successful, and that 78 per cent of those succeeding 
passed in the same semester in which the school failure occurred. 

Success of the Failing Pupils in the Regents' Examinations 

Pass the Same Pass a Later Fail First, Only- 
Semester Semester then Pass Fail 

1333 Boys 809 143 38 343 

1752 Girls 946 193 117 496 

Per Cent of Total 72.8 27. 2 

The divisions of the above distribution are distinct, with no 
overlapping or double counting. Of the pupils who pass these 
examinations in a later semester than that in which the failure 
occurs, a major part belong to the two schools which restrict 
their pupils mainly to a repetition of the subject after failing 
before they attempt the Regents' tests. Otherwise many of 
them would pass the Regents' examinations at once, as in the 
other schools, and would not need to repeat the subject. It was 
pointed out in the initial part of this chapter that 3.2 per cent 
of the instances of failure were followed by both repetition and 
examination. In one of the two schools referred to 90.8 per 
cent of the pupils failing and later taking Regents' examinations 
repeat the subject first. That most of such repetition is almost 
entirely needless is suggested by the fact that only 2.1 per cent 
more of their pupils pass, of the ones attempting, than of the 
total number reported above, and that too in spite of the loss of 
pupils' time and public money by such repetition. It may be, 
and doubtless is, true that an occasional omission occurs in re- 
cording the results after such tests have been taken, but, since 
it is the avowed policy of each school to have complete records 
for their own constant reference (excepting that the practice of 
the smallest of the five units was not to record the Regents' 
failures, and for this school they had to be estimated), the fail- 
ing results would not be expected to be omitted more often than 
the successes, so that only the totals would be perceptibly aflfected 
by such errors. 

One may rightly be permitted to speculate a bit here as to the 
most probable reaction of the pupil in regard to his respect for 
the school standards and for the judgment and opinion of his 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 73 

teacher, when he so readily and repeatedly passes the official 
state tests almost immediately after his school, has classed his 
work as of failing quality. Perhaps it becomes easier for him 
to feel that failure is not a serious matter but an almost neces- 
sary incident that accompanies the expectations of the usual 
school course, just as gout is sometimes regarded as a mere con- 
tingency of ease and plenty. If such be true, and the evidence 
establishes a strong probability that it is, then it is not a helpful 
attitude to develop in the pupil nor one of benefit to the school 
and to society. 

5. Continuation of Subject Without Repetition 

A limited number of records were available in one school for 
the pupils who failed in the first semester of a subject, and who 
were permitted to continue the subject conditionally a second 
semester* without first repeating it. Not all pupils were given 
this privilege, and the conditions of selection were not very defi- 
nite beyond a sort of general confidence and promise relative to 
the pupil. The after-school conference was the only specific 
means provided for aiding such pupils. But 52 per cent of such 
subjects were passed in this manner, and the subsequent passing 
compensated for the previous failure as to school credit. 

Grades For Failing Pupils Who Continue the Subject Without 

Repetition 

A 

259 Boys 

249 Girls 

Per Cent of Total 52 48 

A difference of judgments may prevail as to the significance 
of these facts. Although the passing grades secured are not 
high, 52 per cent have thus been relieved from the subject repeti- 
tion, which on the average results in 33.3 per cent of failures, 
as has been noted in section 1 of this chapter. 

A much more ingenious device for enabling at least some 
pupils to escape the repetition and yet to continue the subject 
was discovered in one school, in which it had been employed. 
Briefly stated, the scheme involved a nominal passing grade of 



B 


C 


D 


7 


133 


119 


3 


119 


125 



74 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

70 per cent, but a passing average of 75 per cent; and so long 
as the average was attained, the grade in one or two of the 
subjects might be permitted to drop as low as 60 per cent. Then 
in the event of a lower average than 75 per cent, it might be 
raised by a new test in the favorite or easiest subject, rather 
than in the low subject. By this scheme the grades could be so 
juggled as to escape repetition or other direct form of reparation 
in spite of repeated failures, unless perchance the grades fell 
below 60 per cent. By a change of administration in the school 
this whole scheme has been superseded. But it had been utilized 
to the extent that the records for this school showed practically 
no repetitions for the failing pupils. 

A Summary of Chapter V 

Among the school agencies for disposing of the failures, repe- 
tition of the subject is the most extensively employed. 

Thirty-three and three-tenths per cent of the repeated grades 
are repeated failures. 

Few of the repeaters take reduced schedules. 

The repeaters with an extra schedule are more successful in 
each of the passing grades, and have 11.4 per cent less failures 
than repeaters with a normal or reduced schedule. 

In the later subjects of the same kind, after failure and repe- 
tition, the unsuccessful grades are 2.2 per cent higher than for a 
similar situation without any repetition. 

The grades in new work for repeaters are markedly superior 
to those in the repeated subjects, for the same semester. 

As the number of identical repetitions are increased (as high 
as six), the percentage of final failure rapidly rises. 

The emphasis placed on repetition is excessive, and the faith 
displayed in it by school practice is unwarranted by the facts. 

Relatively few of the failing pupils who continue in school 
discontinue the subject or substitute another after failure. 

School examinations are employed for 10.3 per cent of the 
failures, with 37.5 per cent of success on the attempts. 

The Regents' examinations are employed for 17.2 per cent of 
the failures, of which 72.8 per cent succeed in passing, and in 
most cases immediatelv after the school failure. 



Are Agencies Employed in Remedying Failures Adequate? 75 

Of those who continue the subject of failure without any repe- 
tition 52 per cent get passing grades. 

No form of school compensation can be considered as adequate 
which does not adapt the treatment to the kind and cause of the 
malady, as manifested by the failure symptoms. 

References : 

1. Briggs, T. H. Report on Secondary Education, U. S. Comm. of Educ. 

Report, 1914. 

2. Snedden, D. In Johnson's Modern High School. II, 24, 26. 

3. Official Bulletin on Promotion and Students' Programs, 1917, from 

Assoc. Supt. in Charge of Secondary Schools, for N. Y. City. 

4. Lewis, W. D. Democracy's High School, p. 45. 

5. Ruling of Board of Supt's., New York City, June, 1917. 



CHAPTER VI 

DO THE FAILURES REPRESENT A LACK OF CAPABIL- 
ITY OR OF FITNESS FOR HIGH SCHOOL WORK 
ON THE PART OF THOSE PUPILS? 

In view of the fact that some of the pupils do not fail in 
any part of their school work, there is a certain popular pre- 
sumption that failure must be significant of pupil inferiority 
when it occurs. That connotation will necessarily be correct 
if we are to judge the individual entirely by that part of 
his work in which he fails, and to assume that the failing 
mark is a fair indication of both achievement and ability. 
Although the pupil is only one of the contributing factors in 
the failure, nevertheless it happens that cherished opportun- 
ity, prizes, praise, honors, employment, and even social recog- 
nition are frequently proffered or withheld according to his marks 
in school. Still further, the pupil who accumulates failures may 
soon cease to be aggressively alive and active ; he is in danger of 
acquiring a conforming attitude of tolerance toward the experi- 
ence of being unsuccessful. Therefore it is particularly moment- 
ous to the pupil, should the school record ascribed to him prove 
frequently to be incongruous with his potential powers. It has 
already been pointed out in these pages that the failures frequently 
tend to designate specific difficulties rather than what is actually 
the negative of ' ability plus application.' This does not at all deny 
that in some instances there appears to be the ability minus the 
application, and that in other cases the pupils are simple unfitted 
for the work required of them. 

1. Some Are Evidently Misfits 

There is a strong presumption that many of the 485 pupils who 
failed in 50 per cent of their school work and dropped out (re- 
ported in Chapter IV) represent misfits for at least the kind of 

76 



Do Failures Represent Lack of Capability f 77 

school subjects offered or required. One cannot say that even 
hopeless failing in any particular subject is a safe criterion of 
general inability, or that failure in abstract sort of mental work 
would be a sure prophecy of failure in more concrete hand work. 
It is altogether probable that some of the individuals in the above 
number were not endowed to profit by an academic high school 
course, and that others were the restless ones at a restless age, 
who just would not fit in, whatever their abilities. But even of 
these pupils a considerable number display sufficient resourceful- 
ness to satisfy many of their failures and to persist in school two, 
three, or four years. There are perhaps at least a few others who, 
without failing, drop out early, prompted by the conviction of their 
own unfitness to succeed in the high school. Yet collectively this 
group is by no means a large one. This conclusion is in har- 
mony with the judgment of former Superintendent Maxwell, of 
New York City,^ who stated that "the number of children leav- 
ing school because they have not the native ability to cope with 
high school studies, is, in my judgment, small." Likewise Van 
Denburg- reached the conclusion that "at least 75 per cent of 
the pupils who enter (high school) have the brains, the native 
ability to graduate, if they chose to apply themselves." With 
many who fail not even is the application lacking, as the facts of 
section 2 will seem to prove. 

2. Most of the Failing Pupils Lack Neither 
Ability or Earnestness 

When we take into account that by the processes of selection 
and elimination only thirty to forty per cent of the pupils who 
enter the elementary school ever reach high school,^ it is readily 
admitted that the high school population is a selected group, of 
approximately 1 in 3. Then of this number we again select less 
than 1 in 3 to graduate. This gives a 1 in 9 selection, let us say, 
of the elementary school entrants. For relatively few general 
purposes in life may we expect to find so high a degree of selec- 
tion. Yet in this 1 in 9 group (who graduate) the percent- 
age of the failing pupils is as high as that of the non-failing 
ones, and the percentage of graduates does not drop even as 
the number of failures rise. So far as ability is required to 



78 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

meet the conditions of graduation they are manifestly provided 
with it. Following this comparison still further, the failing 
pupils who do not graduate have an average number of failures 
that is only .6 higher than for the failing graduates (4.9-4.3) ; 
but barring those non-graduates considered in section 1 of this 
chapter, the average is practically the same as for the failing 
graduates. Moreover, the failing non-graduates continue in 
school, even in the face of failure, much longer than do the non- 
failing non-graduates. That gives evidence of the same quality 
to which the manager of a New York business firm paid tribute 
when he said that he preferred to employ a high school graduate 
for the simple reason that the graduate had learned, by staying 
to graduate, how to ' stick to ' a task. 

The success of the failing pupils in passing the Regents* 
examinations does not give endorsement to the suggestion that 
they are in any true sense weaklings. That they succeed here 
almost concurrently with the failure in the school testifies that 
' they can if they will,' or conversely, as regards the school sub- 
ject, that 'they can but they won't.' Of course it is possible that 
differences in the type of examinations or in the standards of 
judgment as employed by the school and the Regents may be a 
factor in the difference of results secured. The great difficulty 
then seems to resolve itself into a technical problem of more suc- 
cessfully enlisting the energy and ability which they so irrefutably 
do possess in order to secure better school results, but perhaps 
in work that is better adapted to them. Again, the success with 
which these pupils carry a schedule of five or six subjects, besides 
other work not recognized in the treatment of this study, and 
retrieve themselves in the unattractive subjects of failure pleads 
for a recognition of their ability and enterprise. Their difficulty 
is without doubt frequently more physiological than psycholog- 
ical, except as they are the victims of a false psychology, that 
either disregards or misapplies the principles which Thorndike 
terms the law of readiness* to respond and the law of effect, 
and consequently depend largely on the one law of exercise of 
the function to secure the desired results. 

Some additional evidence that the failing pupils can and do 
succeed in most of their subjects is provided by their earlier and 
later records, as disclosed by the total grades received for the 



Do Failures Represent Lack of Capability? 79 

semester first preceding and the one next following that in which 
the failure occurs. There were of course no preceding grades 
for the failures that occur in the first semester, and none succeed- 
ing those that occur in the last semester spent in school. It is 
quite apparent from the following distribution of grades that 
these pupils are far from helpless in regard to the ability required 
to do school work in general. 



Grades of thb Failing Pupils in the Semester Next Preceding the 

Failures 

Total A B C D 

13,857 Boys 315 2883 6668 3991 

17,264 Girls 245 2868 9509 4642 

Per Cent of Total 1.8 18.5 52.0 27.7 

Grades of the Failing Pupils in the Semester Next Succeeding the 

Failures 

Total A B C D 

14,724 Boys 319 2772 7406 4227 

16,942 Girls 281 2788 9114 4759 

Per Cent of Total 1.9 17.7 52.1 28.3 



More than 20 per cent of the grades in the former and nearly 
20 per cent of the grades in the latter distribution are A's or B's, 
52 per cent more in each case are given a lower passing grade, 
while approximately 28 per cent in each distribution have failing 
grades. Though some tendency toward a continuity of failures 
is apparent, there is also evident a pronounced tendency in the 
main for pupils to succeed. That these same pupils could do 
better is not open to doubt. Teachers in two of the larger schools 
asserted that with many pupils a kind of complacency existed 
to feel satisfied with a C, and to consider greater effort for the 
sake of higher passing marks as a waste of time. Such pupils 
openly advocate a greater number of subjects with at least 
a minimum passing mark in each, in preference to fewer subjects 
and the higher grades, which they claim count no more in 
essential credit than a lower passing grade. That attitude may 
account for some of the low marks as well as for some of the 
failures shown above, even though the pupils may possess an 
abundance of mental ability. 

Still another element, apart from the real ability of the pupils, 



80 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

which is contributory to school failures is found in punitive mark- 
ing or in the giving of a failing grade for disciplinary effect. It 
is probably a relatively small element, but it is difficult to estab- 
lish any certain estimate of its amount. Numerous teachers are 
ready to assert its reality in practice. Two cases came directly 
to the author's personal attention by mere chance — one, by the 
frank statement of a teacher who had used this weapon; another, 
by the ready advice of an older to a younger teacher, in the midst 
of recording marks, to fail a boy " because he was too fresh." 
The advice was followed. Such a practice, however prevalent, 
is intolerable and indefensible. If the school failure is to be 
administered as a retaliation or convenience by the teacher, hov/ 
is the moral or educational welfare of the pupil to be served 
thereby? It is certain to be more efficacious for vengeance than 
for purposes of reforming the individual if employed in this way. 
The Regents' rules take recognition of this inclination toward a 
perversion of the function of examination by forbidding any 
exclusion from Regents' examinations as a means of discipline. 
Many teachers cultivate a finesse for discerning weaknesses and 
faults, without perceiving the immeasurable advantage of being 
able to see the pupils' excellences. In one school there was em- 
ployed a plan by which a percentage discount was charged for 
absence, and in some instances it reduced a passing mark to a 
failing mark. This comes close to the assignment of marks of 
failure for penalizing purposes, which is unjustified and vicious. 

It is certain that some of the pupils are failures only in the 
narrow academic sense. Information in reference to a few such 
cases was volunteered by principals, without any effort being 
made to trace such pupils in general. One of the pupils in this 
study who had graduated after failing 23 times, was able to enter 
a reputable college, and had reached the junior year at the time 
of this study. Two others with a record of more than 20 failures 
each had made a decided success in business — one as an auto- 
mobile salesman and manager, the other in a telegraph office. 
It is not unrecognized that the school has many notable failures 
to indicate how even the fittest sometimes do not survive the 
school routine. Among such cases were Darwin, Beecher, 
Seward, Pasteur, Linnaeus, Webster, Edison, and George Eliot, 
who were classed by their schools as stupid or incompetent.^ In 



Do Failures Represent Lack of Capability f 81 

reference to the pupil's responsibility for the failures, Thorndike 
remarks" that " something in the mental or social and economic 
status of the pupil who enters high school, or in the particular 
kind of education given in the United States, is at fault. The 
fact that the elimination is so great in the first year of the high 
school gives evidence that a large share of the fault lies with the 
kind of education given in the United States." Some of the facts 
for those are not eliminated so early are still more definitely 
indicative that something is wrong with the kind of education 
given, as the facts of the following section seem to point out. 

3. The School Emphasis and the School Failures Are 
Both Culminative in Particular School Subjects 
As soon as we find any subject forced upon all pupils alike as 
a school requirement we may be quite sure that it will not meet 
the demands of the individual aptitudes and capacities of some 
portion of those pupils. As a result an accumulation of failures 
will tend to mark out such a uniformly required subject, whether 
it be mathematics, science or Latin. It was pointed out in section 
4 of Chapter II that Latin and mathematics, although admittedly 
in charge of teachers ranking with the best, have both a high 
percentage of the total failures and the highest percentage of 
failures reckoned on the number taking the subject. In both' 
regards there is a heaping up of failures for those two subjects, 
but furthermore there is an arbitrary emphasis culminating in 
these two subjects beyond any others excepting that English is 
a very generally required subject. In reference to these two re- 
quired subjects the pupils who graduate are not more successful 
than those who do not. When the emphasis is on the teaching of 
the subject rather than on the teaching of the pupil there is no 
incongruity in making the subject a requirement for all, but both 
are incongruous with what psychology has more lately recognized 
and pointed out as to the wide range of individual differences. A 
similar situation is evidenced by the percentage of failure in 
science as reported for the St. Louis high school in Chapter II. 
A year of physics had been made compulsory for all, and taught 
in the second year.'^ Its percentage of failures accordingly 
mounts to the highest place. Mr. Meredith, who conducted that 



82 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

portion of the survey, rightly regards the poHcy as a mistake, and 
recommends that the needs of individual pupils be considered. 

It is indeed striking how failures of the pupils are grouped 
under particular subjects of difficulty, and how the pupils fail 
again and again in the same general subject. No educational 
expert would seem to be needed to diagnose a goodly number of 
these chronic cases of failing and to detect a productive source 
of the whole trouble if only the following distribution were pre- 
sented to him. 

Distribution of Pupils According to the Number of Times They Have 
Failed in the Same Su'bject 

No. of Times 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 

Boys 2852 1416 425 196 73 25 2 4 1 1 1 1 

Girls 2812 1722 501 250 98 31 7 8 3 1 3 

By ' same subjects ' the same general divisions are designated, 
as English, Latin, mathematics. We may be led to note first 
that a major portion of the above distribution of pupils belongs 
to those who fail but once in the same subject; but then we 
note that by far the greater number of failures comprised by that 
distribution belong to those who fail two or more times in the 
same subject. To state that fact more specifically, 68.5 per cent 
of the total 17,960 failures involved in this study are made by 
two or more failures in the same subject, while 31.5 per cent 
of the failures belong to a more promiscuous and varied collec- 
tion of failures, of not more than one in any subject. It will be 
noted here that some subjects do not have a greater continuity 
than one year or even one semester on the school program. Such 
subjects provide the least possibility of successive failures in the 
same field. A further analysis shows that the failures incurred 
by three or more instances occurring in the same subject form 
33.6 per cent of the entire number ; and that 18 per cent of the 
total is comprised of four or more instances of failure in the 
same subject. There is small probability that such a multiplica- 
tion of failures by subjects will characterize the subjects which, 
are least productive of failures in general, and such is not the 
case in fact. Latin and mathematics are again the chief con- 
tributors, and this would seem to be a fact also for those schools 
quoted from outside of this study, for purposes of comparison 
in Chapter II. 



Do Failures Represent Lack of Capability f 83 

The above distribution speaks with graphic eloquence of how 
the school tends to focus emphasis on the subject prescribed and 
then to demand that the pupil be fitted or become fitted to the 
courses offered. Such heaping up of failures will more likely 
mark those subjects which seem to the pupil to be furthest from 
meeting his needs and appealing to his interests. 

In two of the schools studied, an X, Y, and Z division was 
formed in certain difficult subjects for the failing pupils, by 
which they take three semesters to complete two semesters of 
work. This plan, as judged by results, is obviously insufficient 
for such pupils and tends to prove further that the kind of work 
is more at fault in the matter of failing than is the amount. 
Frequently a pupil who fails in the A semester (first) will also 
fail in the X division of that subject as he repeats it, while at 
the same time his work is perhaps not inferior in the other sub- 
jects. The data for these special divisions were not kept distinct 
in transcribing the records, so that it is not possible to offer the 
tabulated facts here. There are numerous recognized illustra- 
tions of how some pupils find some particular subject as history, 
mathematics, or language distinctively difficult for them. 

4. An Indictment Against the Subject-Matter and the 
Teaching Ends^ as Factors in Producing Failures 

The evidence already disclosed to the effect that the high school 
entrants are highly selected, that few of the failing pupils lack 
sufficient ability for the work, that they have manifested their 
ability and energy in diverse ways, and that particular subjects 
are unduly emphasized and by the uniformity of their require- 
ment cause much maladjustment, largely contributing to the 
harvest of failures, seems to warrant an indictment against both 
the subject-matter and the teaching ends for factoring so promi- 
nently in the production of failures. There is clearly an adminis- 
trative and curriculum problem involved here in the sense that not 
a few of the failures seem to represent the cost at which the ma- 
chinery operates. This is in no sense intended as a challenge to any 
subject to defend its place in the high school curriculum, but it is 
meant to challenge the policy of the indiscriminate requirement of 
any subject for all pupils, allowing only that English of some kind 



84 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

will usually be a required subject for the great majority of the 
pupils. It is simply demanded that Latin and mathematics shall 
stand on their own merits, and that the same shall apply to history 
and science or other subjects of the curriculum. So far as they 
are taught each should be taught as earnestly and as efficiently 
as possible ; but it should not be asked that any teacher take the 
responsibility for the unwilling and unfitted members of a class 
who are forced into the subject by an arbitrary ruling which 
regards neither the motive, the interest or the fitness of the indi- 
vidual. 

This indictment extends likewise to the teaching method or 
purpose which focalizes the teachers' attention and energy chiefly 
on the subject. Certain basic assumptions, now pretty much dis- 
credited, have led to the avowed teaching of the subject for its 
own sake, and often without much regard to any definite social 
utility served by it. This charge seems to find an instance in the 
handling of the subject of English so that 16.5 per cent of all the 
failures are contributed by it, without giving even the graduate 
a mastery of direct, forceful speech, as is so generally testified. 
Strangely enough, except in the light of such teaching ends, the 
pupils who stay through the upper years and to graduate have 
more failures in certain subjects than the non-graduates who 
more generally escape the advanced classes of these subjects. 
The traditional standards of the high school simply do not meet 
the dominant needs of the pupils either in the subject-content 
or in the methods employed. Some of these traditional methods 
and studies are the means of working disappointment and prob- 
ably of inculcating a genuine disgust rather than of furnish- 
ing a valuable kind of discipline. The school must provide 
more than a single treatment for all cases. In each subject 
there must be many kinds of treatment for the different cases 
in order to secure the largest growth of the individuals included. 
This does not in any sense necessitate the displacement of 
thoroughness by superficiality or trifling, but on the contrary 
greater thoroughness may be expected to result, as helpful 
adaptations of method and of matter give a meaningful and 
purposeful motive for that earnest application which thorough- 
ness itself demands. 



Do Failures Represent Lack of Capability f 85 

Summary of Chapter VI 

The pupil is but one of several factors involved in the failure, 
yet the consequences are most momentous for him. 

The pupils who lack native ability sufficient for the work are 
not a large number. 

The high school graduates represent about a 1 in 9 selection 
of the elementary school entrants, but in this group is included 
as high a percentage of the failing pupils as of the non-failing 
ones. 

The success of the failing pupils in the Regents' examinations, 
and also in their repeating with extra schedules, bears witness 
to their possession of ability and industry. 

In the semester first preceding and that immediately subse- 
quent to the failure, 72 per cent of all the grades are passing, 
20 per cent are A's or B's. Many of them " can if they will." 

The early elimination of pupils, the number that fail, and the 
notable cases of non-success in school are evidence of some- 
thing wrong with the kind of education. 

The characteristic culmination of failures for Latin and mathe- 
matics can hardly be considered a part of the pupils' responsi- 
bility. 

Of all the failures 68.5 per cent are incurred by instances of 
two or more failures in the same subject. 

Much maladjustment of the subject assignments is almost 
inevitable by a prescribed uniformity of the same content and 
the same treatment for all. 

The traditional methods and emphasis probably account for 
more disappointment and disgust than for valuable discipline. 

References : 

1. Maxwell, W. H. A Quarter Century oj Public School Development, p. 88. 

2. Van Denburg, J. K. The Elimination oj Pupils from Public Secondary 

Schools, p. 183. 

3. Annual Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1917. 

4. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, Vol. II, Chap. I. 

5. Swift, E. J. Mind in the Making, Chap. I. 

6. Thorndike, E. L. Elimination of Pupils from School, U. S. Bull. 4, 1907. 

7. Meredith, A. B. Survey of the St. Louis Public Schools, 1917, Vol. Ill, 

pp. 51, 40. 



CHAPTER VII 

WHAT TREATMENT IS SUGGESTED BY THE DIAG- 
NOSIS OF THE FACTS OF FAILURE? 

It is not the purpose of this chapter to formulate conclusions 
that are arbitrary, fixed, or all-complete. There are definite 
reasons why that should not be attempted. The author merely 
undertakes to apply certain well recognized and widely accepted 
principles of education and of psychology, as among the more 
important elements recommending themselves to him in any 
endeavor to derive an adequate solution for the situation dis- 
closed in the preceding chapters. The significance of those pre- 
ceding chapters in reference to the failures of the high school 
pupils is not at all conditioned by this final chapter. Since as a 
problem of research the findings have now been presented, it is pos- 
sible that others may find the basis therein for additional or differ- 
ent conclusions from the ones suggested here. For such persons 
Chapter VII need not be considered an inseparable or essenti- 
ally integral part of this report on the field of the research. In- 
deed the purpose of this study will not have been served most 
fully until it has been made the subject of dicussion and of 
criticism; and the treatment that is recommended here will not 
necessarily preclude other suggestions in the general effort to 
devise a solution or solutions that are the most satisfactory. 

It appears from the analysis made in Chapter VI of the pupils' 
capability and fitness relative to the school failures that it is 
impossible to make any definite apportionment of responsibility 
to the pupils, until we have first frankly faced and made an 
effective disposition of the malfunctioning and misdirection as 
found in the school itself. It does not follow from this that 
any radical application of surgery need be recommended, but 
instead, a practical and extended course of treatment should be 
prescribed, which will have due regard for the nature and loca- 

86 



What Treatment Is Suggested by the Diagnosis of Failure f 87 

tion of the ills to be remedied. Anything less than this will 
seem to be a mere external salve and leave untouched the chronic 
source of the systematic maladjustment. It is not assumed that 
a school system any more than any other institution or machine 
can be operated without some loss. But the failure of the 
school to make a natural born linguist pass in a subject of tech- 
nical mathematics is perhaps unfortunate only in the thing 
attempted and in the uselessness of the effort. 

We must take into account at the very beginning the funda- 
mental truth stated by Thorndike,^ that " achievement is a meas- 
ure of ability only if the conditions are equal." Corollary to 
that is the fact that the same uniform conditions and require- 
ments are often very unequal as applied to different individuals. 
The equalization of educational opportunity does not at all mean 
the same duplicated method or content for all. That interpretation 
will controvert the very spirit and purpose of the principle stated. 
Any inflexible scheme which attempts to fashion all children 
into types, according to preconceived notions, and whose per- 
petuity is rooted in a psychology based on the uniformity of the 
human mind, simply must give way to the newer conception 
which harmonizes with the psychic laws of the individual, or 
else continue to waste much time and energy in trying to force 
pupils to accomplish those things for which they have neither 
the capacity nor the inclination. It is accordingly obligatory 
on the school to give intelligent and responsive recognition to 
the wide differentiation of social demands, and to the extent and 
the continuity of the individual differences of pupils. 

1. Organization and Adaptation in Recognition of the In- 
dividual Differences in Abilities and Interests 

If the school failures are to be substantially reduced, the teach- 
ing of the school subjects with the chief emphasis on the pupil 
must surely replace the practice of teaching the subjects prim- 
arily for their own sake. This 'subject first' treatment must 
give place to the 'pupil first' idea. No subject then will over- 
shadow the pupil's welfare, and the pupil will not be subjected 
to the subject. Education in terms of subject-matter is well de- 
signed to produce a large crop of failures. Neither the addition 



88 School Records of Pupils Failing in High ScJiool Subjects 

or subtraction of subjects is urged primarily, but the adaptation 
and utilization of the school agencies so as to make the pupils as 
efficient and as productive as possible, by recognizing first of all 
their essential lack of uniformity in reference to capacities and 
interests, — not only as between different individuals, but in the 
same individual at dififerent ages, at dififerent stages of maturity, 
and in different kinds of subjects. This conception precludes the 
school employment of subjects and methods for all alike which 
are obviously better adapted to the younger than to the older. 
Neither does it overlook the fact that the attitude of more mature 
pupils toward authority and discipline is essentialy different from 
that of the younger boys and girls; that a subject congenial to 
some pupils will be intolerable and nearly if not quite impossible 
for others ; or that an appeal designed mainly to reach the girls 
will not reach boys equally w^ell. In brief, the treatment pro- 
posed here is neither radical nor novel, but it is simply the institu- 
tion of applied psychology as pertaining to school procedure. 
What the more modern experimental psychology has established 
must be utilized in the school, at the expense of the more obsolete 
and traditional. Psychology now generally recognizes the ex- 
istence of what the general school procedure implies does not 
exist, namely, the wide range of individual differences. 

The situation clearly demands that our public schools shall not, 
by clinging to precedent and convention, fall notably behind in- 
dustry and government in appropriating the fruits of modern 
scientific research. As the doctor varies the diet to the needs 
of each patient and each affliction, so must the school serve the 
intellectual and social needs of the pupils by such an organiza- 
tion and attitude that the selection of subjects for each pupil may 
take an actual and specific regard of the individual to be served. 
The change all important is not necessarily in the school sub- 
ject or curriculum, but rather a change in the attitude as to 
how a subject shall be presented — to whom and by whom. The 
latter will also determine the character of the pupil's response 
and the subject's educational value to him. By securing a 
genuine response from the pupils a subject or course of study is 
thereby translated into pupil achievement and hum.an results. 
The authority of the school is impotent to get these results by 
merely commanding them or by requiring all to pursue the same 



What Treatment Is Suggested by the Diagnosis of Failure? 89 

subject. An experience, in order to have truly educational value, 
must come within the range of the pupils comprehension and 
interest. Quoting Newman,^ " To get the most out of an ex- 
perience there must be more or less understanding of its better 
possibilities. The social and ethical impHcations must some- 
where and at some time be lifted very definitely into conscious 
understanding and volition." The pupil's responsiveness is then 
much more important both for securing results and for reducing 
failures than is any subject content or method that is not effective 
in securing a tolerable and satisfying sort of mental activity. 

2, Faculty Student Advisers from the Time of Entrance 

Not only the failure of pupils in their school subjects but the 
failure also of 13 per cent of them to remain in school even to 
the end of the first semester, or of 23.1 per cent to remain beyond 
the first semester (Tables V and VI) — of whom a relatively small 
number had failed (about J4) — make a strong appeal for the ap- 
pointment of sympathetic and helpful teachers as student advisers 
from the very time of their entrance. One teacher is able to 
provide personal advice and educational guidance for from 20 to 
30 pupils. The right type of teachers, their early appointment, 
and the keeping of some sort of confidential and unofficial record, 
all seem highly important. 

Superintendent Maxwell mentioned among the reasons why 
pupils leave schooP that " they become bewildered, sometimes 
scared, by the strange school atmosphere and the aloofness of the 
high school teachers." There is a strangeness that is found in 
the transition to high school surroundings and to high school 
work which certainly should not be augmented by any further 
handicap for the pupil. There are no fixed limitations to what 
helpfulness the advisers may render in the way of ' a big brother * 
or ' big sister ' capacity. It is all incidental and supplementary 
in form, but of inestimable value to the pupils and the school. A 
further service that is far more unusual than difficult may be 
performed by the pupils who are not new, in the way of remov- 
ing strangeness for those who are entering what seems to them 
a sort of new esoteric cult in the high school. The girls of the 
Washington Irving High School^ of New York City recently 



90 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

put into practice a plan to give a personal welcome to each entering 
girl, and a personal escort for the first hour, including the regis- 
tration and a tour of the building, in addition to some friendly 
inquiries, suggestions, and introductions. The pupil is then more 
at home in meeting the teachers later. Here is the sort of 
courtesy introduced into the school that commercial and business 
houses have learned to practice to avoid the loss of either present 
or prospective customers. Soma day the school must learn more 
fully that the faith cure is much cheaper than surgery and less 
painful as well. 



3. Greater Flexibility and Differentiation Required 

The recognition of individual differences urged in section 1 
necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school 
curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs 
to be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means. 
The rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has con- 
tributed perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of 
the educational machinery. The importance of this change from 
compulsion and rigidity toward greater flexibility has already 
received attention and commendation. One authority* states that 
" one main cause of (H. S.) elimination is incapacity for and lack 
of interest in the sort of intellectual work demanded by the 
present courses of study," and further that " specialization of 
instruction for different pupils within one class is needed as well 
as specialization of the curriculum for different classes." There 
must be less of the assumption that the pupils are made for the 
schools, whose regime they must fit or else fail repeatedly where 
they do not fit. Theoretically considerable progress has already 
been made in the differentiation of curricula, but in practice the 
opportunity that is offered to the pupils to profit thereby is cur- 
tailed, because of the rigid organization of courses and the uni- 
form requirements that are dictated by administrative conveni- 
ence or by the college entrance needs of the minority. The only 
permissible limitations to the variables of the curriculum should 
be such as aim to secure a reasonable continuity and sequence of 
subjects in one or more of the fields selected. One of the chief 
barriers to a more general flexibility has been the notion of 



What Treatment Is Suggested by the Diagnosis of Failure f 91 

inequality between the classical and all other types of education. 
This assumption has had its foundations heavily shaken of late. 
The quality of response which it elicits has come to receive a 
precedence over the name by which a subject happens to be classi- 
fied. " France has come out boldly and recognized at least offici- 
ally the exact parity between the scientific education and the 
classical education." ^ Indeed one may doubt whether this parity 
will ever again be seriously questioned, because of the elevation 
of scientific training and accomplishment in the great world war, 
as well as in its adaptation for the direct and purposeful dealing 
with the problems of modern life. Especially for the early 
classes in the high school does the situation demand a relatively 
flexible curriculum, else the only choice will be to drop out to 
escape drudgery or failure. Inglis maintains that the selective 
function of the high school may operate by a process of diflfer- 
entiation rather than by a wholesale elimination.® The pupil 
surely cannot know in advance what he is best fitted for, but the 
school must help him find that out, if it is to render a very valu- 
able service, and one at all comparable to the success of the 
industrial expert in utilizing his material and in minimizing waste. 
The junior high school especially aims to perform this function 
that is so slighted in the senior high school. Yet neither the 
organization nor the purpose of the two are so far apart as to 
excuse the helplessness of the latter in this important duty. 

There is apparently no constitutional impediment to a still fur- 
ther extension of the principle of flexibility and to the minimizing 
of loss by what has been a costly trial and error method of fitting 
the pupils and the subjects to each other. Short unit courses 
are not unfamiliar in certain educational fields, and they lend 
themselves very readily to definite and specific needs. Their use- 
fulness may be regarded as a warrant of a wider adoption of 
them. Although they are as yet employed mainly for an inten- 
sive form of training or instruction to meet specific needs of a 
particular group in a limited time,^ the principle of their use is 
no longer novel. A unit course of an extensive nature is also 
conceivable, for instance, a semester of any subject entitled to 
two credits might allow a division into two approximately equal 
portions. If then both teacher and pupil feel, when one unit is 
completed, that the pupil is in the wrong subject or that his wprl? 



92 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

is hopeless in that subject, he might be permitted to withdraw 
and be charged with a failure of only one point, that is, just one- 
half the failure of a semester's work in the subject — or one-fourth 
that for a whole year with no semester divisions. Even if this 
scheme would not work equally well in all subjects, it implies no 
extensive reorganization to employ it in the ones adapted. It is 
not incredible that, as the people more generally understand that 
physics, chemistry, and biology have become vital to national 
self-preservation and social well-being, their emphasis as subjects 
required or as subjects sought by most of the pupils may lead to 
a high percentage of failures, such as is found for Latin and 
mathematics usually, or for science as reported in St. Louis, 
where it was required of all and yielded the highest percentage 
of failures. Now the teaching of most sciences by the unit plan 
will comprise no greater difficulty than is involved in overcoming 
text-book methods and the conservatism of convention. The pro- 
ject device, as employed in vocational education, will also lend 
itself in many instances to the unit division of work. The first 
consequence of this plan will be a reduction of failures for the 
pupil in those subjects whose continued pursuit would mean 
increased failure. The second consequence may be to relieve 
teachers of hopeless cases of misfit in any subject, for if the pupils 
no longer have intolerable subjects imposed on them the teachers 
will come to demand only tolerable work in the subjects of their 
choice. The third consequence will probably be to encourage 
pupils to find themselves by trying out subjects at less risk of 
such cumulative failures as are disclosed in section 3 of the pre- 
ceding chapter. 

4. Provision for the Direction of the Pupils' Study 

The forms of treatment suggested in the first three sections 
of this chapter for the diminution of failures will find their 
natural culmination of effectiveness in a plan for helping the 
pupils to help themselves. This has been notably lacking in most 
school practice. Every improvement of the school adaptation 
still assumes that the pupils are to apply themselves to honest, 
thorough study. But the high school must bear in mind that 
good studying implies good teaching. It cannot be trusted to 
intuition or to individual discovery. Real, earnest studying is 



What Treatment Is Suggested by the Diagnosis of Failure f 93 

hard work. The teachers have usually presupposed habits of 
study on the part of the pupils, but one of the important lessons 
for the school to teach the pupil is how to use his mind and his 
books effectively and efficiently. Even the simplest kinds of ap- 
prenticeship instruct the novice in the use of each device and in 
the handling of each tool to a degree which the school most often 
disregards when requiring the pupil to use even highly abstract 
and complex instrumentalities. The practice of the school almost 
glorifies drudgery as a genuine virtue. E. R. Breslich refers to 
this fact,* saying, " so it happens that the preparation for the 
classwork, not the classwork itself burdens the lives of the 
pupils." The indefensibleness of the indiscriminate lesson giving 
consists in the fact that it is not the load but the harness that is 
too heavy. The harness is more exhausting and burdensome 
than the load appointed. The destination sought and the course 
to be followed in the lesson preparation are very many times not 
clearly indicated, lest the discipline, negative and repressive 
though it be, should be extracted from the struggle. The fact 
is that discouragement and failure are too often the best of testi- 
mony that teachers are not much concerned about how the pupil 
employs his time or books in studying a lesson. The point is 
illustrated admirably by the report in the Ladies Home Journal, 
for January, 1913, of a request from a hardworking widow that 
the teacher of one of her children in school try teaching the child 
instead of just hearing the lessons which the mother had taught. 
Directing the pupils' study is sometimes regarded as a more 
or less formalized scheme of organization and procedure, which 
requires extra time, extra teachers, and a lesser degree of 
independence on the part of the pupils. But here too the important 
things are differentiation and specific direction as adapted to the 
needs of the subject, the topic or the pupils. It must be insisted 
that supervised study is not the same thing in all schools, in all 
subjects, or for all pupils. In other words, its very purpose 
is defeated if it is overformalized. An experiment is reported 
by J. H. Minnick with two classes in plane geometry,® of 
practically the same size, ability, and time allowance for study, 
which indicated that the supervised pupils were the less depend- 
ent as judged by their success in tests consisting of new problems. 
The pupils also liked the method, in spite of their early opposi- 
tion, and no one failed, while two of the unsupervised class 



94 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

failed. William Wiener also speaks of the wonderful self- 
control which springs from the supervised study program.^" 
As to the need of extra teachers for the purpose there is not 
much real agreement, since the plans of adaptaion are so differ- 
ent in themselves. Increased labor for the same teachers will 
rightly imply greater renumeration. Colvin makes mention 
of the additional expense imposed by the larger force of teachers 
required.^^ But J. S. Brown finds that the failures are so 
largely reduced that with fewer repeaters there is a consequent 
saving in the teaching force.^- With a faculty of 66 teachers, 
he reports 38 classes in which there was no failure, and a marked 
reduction of failures in general by the use of supervised study. 
It is interesting and significant to note here that by allowing 100 
daily pupil recitations to the teacher the repeated subjects re- 
ported in this study would require 87 teachers for one semester 
or 11 teachers for the full four years. This fact represents 
more than $50,000 in salaries alone. Buildings, equipment, heat, 
and other expenses will more than double the amount. But 
such expense is incomparable with what the pupils pay in time, 
in struggles, and in disappointment in order to succeed later 
in only 66.7 per cent of the subjects repeated. As none of the 
eight schools provided anything more definite than a general 
after school hour for offering help, and which often has a puni- 
tive suggestion to it, the possibility of saving many of these 
pupils from failure and repetition by the wise and helpful direc- 
tion of their study is -simply unmeasured. A conclusion that is 
particularly encouraging is reported by W. C. Reavis to the effect 
that the poorer pupils — the ones who most need the direction — 
are the ones that supervised study helps the most.^^ There is 
nothing novel in saying that good teaching and good studying 
are but different aspects of the same process, but it would be 
an innovation to find this conception generally realized in the 
school practice. 

5. A Greater Recognition and Exposition of the Facts As 
Revealed by Accurate and Complete School Records 

It is unfortunate that the detailed and complete records which 
tell the whole story about the failures in the school and for 
the mdividual are found in relatively few schools, even when 



What Treatment Is Suggested by the Diagnosis of Failure f 95 

on all sides business enterprises find a complete system of de- 
tailed records, filed and indexed, altogether indispensable for 
their intelligent operation and administration. The school still 
proceeds in its sphere too much by chance and faith, forgetting 
mistakes and recalling successes. This is possible because there 
is no question of self-support or of solvency to face, and because 
neither the teachers nor the institution are in danger of direct 
financial loss by their waste, duplication, or failures. In the 
absence of records it is always possible to calmly assume that 
the facts are not so bad as for other schools which do report 
their recorded facts. The prevailing unfamiliarity with statis- 
tical methods may also favor a skepticism as to their proper 
application to education, since it is not an exact science. But 
the fact remains established that it is always possible to measure 
qualitative differences if stated in terms of their quantitative 
a,mounts. 

Admirable and complete as are the records for the many schools 
of the minority group possessing them, their more general value 
and information are still quite securely hidden away in the files 
which contain them. Peculiarly interesting was the surprise 
expressed by the principals at the extensive and significant 
information which their own school records provided, when they 
received individual reports on the data collected and tabulated 
for this study. Yet they received only the portions of the 
tabulations which seemed most likely to interest them. The 
principals do not have the time or the assistance to study in 
a collective way the facts which are provided by their own rec- 
ords, but they are entitled to much credit for so courteously co- 
operating with any competent person for utilizing their records 
for approved purposes and in turn sharing their results with 
the school. To proceed wisely in the administration of the 
school we must have a chance to know and discuss the facts. 
It is not possible to know the facts without adequate records. 
The absence of evidence gives prominence to opinion and pre- 
cedent. Accordingly, it is entirely incredible that the number, 
the repetition, and the accumulation of failures would remain 
unchanged after a fair exposition and discussion of the evidence 
presented in a collective and comprehensive form. Itmaybe neces- 
sary to admit that a few teachers will hold opinions so strong 
that they will discredit all testimony not in support of such 



96 School Records of Pupils Failing in High School Subjects 

opinions. But the high school teachers in general seem fairly 
and earnestly disposed, even about revising their notions con- 
cerning the truth in any situation. In regard to the relative 
number and time of the failures, the actual and relative success 
in repeated work, the advantage of repetition for later work, 
the relation of success to the size of the schedule, the influence 
of the number of failures on graduation, and numbers of other 
vital facts, it could be said of the teachers in general that they 
simply knew not what they were doing. They even thought 
they were doing what they were not. The school records must 
be disclosed and utilized more fully if their value and import- 
ance are to be realized. It will be a large source of satisfaction 
if this report helps to direct attention to the official school records, 
from which a frequent ' trial balance ' will help to rectify and 
clarify the school practice. Both are needed. 

Summary of Chapter VII 

The contributing factors found in the school must first be 
remedied, before responsibility for the failures can be fairly 
apportioned to the pupils. 

The provision of uniform conditions for all is based on the 
false doctrine of the uniformity of the human mind. Such 
conditions may prove very unequal for some individuals, and 
achievement is not then a real measure of ability. 

By applying a functioning psychology to school practice, more 
adaptation and specialization are required to meet the individual 
differences of pupils. 

No change of subjects is in general necessitated, but a change 
of the attitude which subjects pupils to the subjects seems 
essential. 

The genuineness of the pupil's response depends on the pupil 
and the subject. A policy of coercion will usually beget only 
dislike or failure. 

Properly selected student advisers, appointed early, may trans- 
form the school for the pupil, save the pupil for the school, and 
his work from failures. 

A relatively high degree of flexibility and specialization of 
the curriculum will help the pupil find what he is best fitted 



What Treatment Is Suggested by the Diagnosis of Failure f 97 

for, and thereby minimize waste. This will include a virtual 
parity between the classical and scientific subjects. 

The reduction of some subjects to smaller units will tend to 
facilitate flexibility and a reduction of failures. 

The provision of directed study will help the pupils to help 
themselves. Good teaching demands it. The harness is often 
heavier than the load. Failures are inevitable. 

The plan of study direction must be varied according to the 
varying needs of pupils, subjects, and schools. The poorer 
pupils are aided most. They are made even more reliant on 
themselves. The reduction of failures tends to balance any 
added expense. 

Records adequate and complete should be a part of the busi- 
ness and educational equipment of every school. The exposi- 
tion and use of these facts as recorded will then give direction 
to school progress, and dethrone the authority of assumption 
and opinion. 

References: 

1. Thorndike, E. L. Individuality, pp. 38, 51. 

2. Neuman, H. Moral Values in Secondary Education, United States 

Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 51, 1917, pp. 18, 17. 

3. Maxwell, W. H. A Quarter Century of Public School Development, 

p. 89. 

4. Thorndike, E. L. The Elimination of Pupils from School, U. S. Bureau 

of Education Bulletin, No. 4, 1907, p. 10. 

5. Farrington, F. E. French Secondary Schools, p. 124. 

6. Inglis, A. Principles of Secondary Education, p. 669. 

7. Committee of N. E. A. Vocational Secondary Education, U. S. Bureau 

of Education Bulletin No. 21, 1916, p. 58. 

8. Breslich, E. R. Supervised Study as Supplementary Instruction, Thirteenth 

Yearbook, p. 43. 
9 Minnick, J. H. " The Supervised Study of Mathematics," School 
Review, 21-670. 

10. Wiener, W. " Home Study Reform," School Review, 20-526. 

11. Colvin, S. S. An Introduction to High School Teaching, p. 366. 

12. Brown, J. S. School and Home Education, February, 1915, p. 207. 

13. Reavis, W. C. " Supervised Study," in Parker's Methods of Teaching 

in the High School, p. 398. 



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